Understanding the PPP’s epistemology

Mar 05, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Epistemology may sound like a big word, but it is such an important concept that all humans that live under authoritarian, totalitarian, tyrannical or even semi-dictatorial governments need to understand what epistemology means. Citizens who live under ethnic domination also must be familiar with the term.
Wikipedia has a very simple definition – the study of the source and meaning of knowledge and the ultimate nature of knowledge. Inherent in epistemology is the search for knowledge that is based on the justification of values and truths. Guyana and the United States are heading for inevitable breakdown, because of epistemological differences between opposing politicians.
Let us start with two simple examples of religious conservatism and the Indian caste system. A deeply religious and ideologically conservative man accepts that women are the physically inferior gender whose child-bearing capacities confine them to roles that are naturally designed for them. They are providers in the household for the working patriarch and the children. This is his epistemological understanding of knowledge.
In the Indian caste system that even a phenomenon like Mahatma Gandhi accepted, the source of knowledge is Hindu culture. When an airline CEO refuses the application of a dark-skinned woman for a flight attendant job, his decision is derived from epistemological understanding of Hindu culture, and the truth of Hindu culture is that the caste system is what life should consist of.
In the US, the Republican Party may have to wait for another century to win the presidency. That party’s source of knowledge from which it bases its philosophical positions goes back to the US that it knew it to be more than a hundred years ago. That kind of United States is dead.
The US has changed since 1914, where in 2014 it bears no resemblance to the last century. The American dream is not easy to realize any longer.
White America will soon be non-white America and the frontier mentality is no longer the dominant one. The US has very poor people, and the role of government will never go away. And the US is never going to go back to rugged individuality as it was a hundred years ago. But the Republican Party still sees the source of knowledge from that era.
In Guyana, the PPP isn’t going to offer even a modicum of accommodation to the opposition, and sooner than later instability is going to come if the PPP is returned to power through a minority government. The inevitability of a turbulent Guyana is founded on the epistemology of the PPP. This epistemology is flawed, ugly and has not the slightest connection to reality. But it is the PPP’s understanding of knowledge. And the PPP will inflexibly cling to those ‘truths” that it sees as inherent in knowledge.
This is the danger with politics, particularly ethnic politics. Truths for some people are objective values that inhere in knowledge.
I was in graduate school with an Indian from India and deep in his soul he believed the caste system was the true source of knowledge. It is the same with the PPP, and the personality of Dr. Jagan looms graphically in the background. Dr. Jagan destroyed the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy because epistemologically for him, socialism was superior to democracy.
So in the eighties he insisted that any national government, with or without the PNC, must be socialist, because socialism is true knowledge. If a potential national government did not proclaim a socialist programme, Dr. Jagan was not willing to participate.
Take Roger Luncheon (where is he, by the way?) who is a typical PPP epistemologist. In talks with Opposition Leader Desmond Hoyte, the dialogue broke down because Luncheon exclaimed to the PNC’s delegation; “Comrades, you are talking to the ruling party.” For Hoyte this was nonsense. Both parties were equal in relation to the discussion on national reconciliation.
If you ask Luncheon today if the ruling party is in fact the ruling party given the fact that it has no control over Parliament, it cannot pass the anti-money laundering Bill, and the Government can fall tomorrow out of a successful no-confidence vote in the House, the very Luncheon would say that nothing has changed since he made that exclamation in front of Desmond Hoyte, and that the ruling party is still the ruling party.
Take Ramotar; he told his audience at the opening of the Hope Bridge that Guyana needs a new political culture. But ask him to explain what that means and he will tell you it is about the PNC changing its ways. Ask him what reconciliation means, and he is going to say, responsible behaviour by the PNC. This is the dangerous problem with the PPP.

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