Latest update November 18th, 2024 1:00 AM
Mar 14, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I refer readers to my column of March 5 captioned, “Understanding the epistemology of the PPP.” Here is a reminder of the definition; “Epistemology is the study of the source and meaning of knowledge and the ultimate nature of knowledge.”
Then I went on to state that once the PPP accepts a certain meaning of knowledge, that knowledge is the source of truths.
The PPP then will be unshakeable in their beliefs that they have discovered the meaning of knowledge. I went on in that March 5 piece to assert that when the PPP leaders speak about politics in Guyana, it is from the perspective of this claim to discovering how knowledge comes about and what is its real meaning.
I gave an example of President Ramotar’s understanding of Guyana’s political culture, by quoting him as saying that Guyana needs a new political culture. By that, he means a change in the attitudes of the opposition, not the PPP. The PPP’s epistemology would not allow it to see its political culture as far more in need of changing than the opposition’s.
Four days after that column on epistemology was published, Clement Rohee proved me right about the PPP’s epistemology. No other example can be more graphic than what Clement Rohee said about the 2011 general elections at the death anniversary of Cheddi Jagan last Sunday.
I will quote him and after you have read his statement, juxtapose it against the contents of that March 5 column of mine. Mr. Rohee boldly proclaimed; “They (the opposition) want us (the PPP) to do their bidding, they are behaving as if the PPP is the executive arm of the one-seat majority of the parliament…We want to remind them that this PPP government was democratically elected.”
To comprehend the ugly epistemology of the PPP, one must pay attention to the conspicuous juxtaposition in Rohee’s delivery of the derogation of the parliamentary majority of the opposition and the bold exclamation that the PPP was elected. In other words, elections are truthful things when they bring a PPP victory; when they do not then such knowledge is flawed.
It was definitely no accident that Rohee put the election of the PPP alongside the denunciation of the opposition. In this man’s mind, the PPP is more legitimate than the opposition because it was elected.
Here is a simple example of how sickening is the PPP’s approach to epistemological categories. Four persons contested the presidency of their football club, facing a hundred voters. The count was A- 22; B- 23; C- 24; D- 31. The results commonsensically showed that D cannot command a majority of the club’s membership.
After the vote, A, B, C had an argument with D, and D got angry. He then said, “Let me tell you something; you want to bully me but I was elected president.”
D becomes a fool, because out of a hundred members, all he got was 31. This analogy with the 2001 election stops here because in the case of the football club, Mr. D can still call the shots, even though he only got 31 votes. There is no higher body than the club president.
In the 2011 general elections, the voters put the most important source of power in the hands of APNU and the AFC – Parliament. Mr. Rohee and no doubt all the PPP leaders do not see this process as legitimate, thus cannot see the foundation of Parliament as resting on a majority vote.
As Rohee puts it, the PPP was elected but he stopped short in saying, “So was Parliament too.” The votes the opposition got did come from a democratic election but from Elm Street at Freddy Krueger’s home or maybe they rigged the thing.
As I have written several times before, it is this backward epistemology of the PPP that holds so much danger for Guyana. After Rohee’s speech at Jagan’s death anniversary in which only the PPP was referred to as an elected body, there is no imaginable way the PPP is going to recognize the power of Parliament.
Even though the business sector is crying out in fear everyday about financial sanctions from the world over the failure to have a proper anti-money laundering Bill, the PPP is not going to accept changes to the legislation from the opposition, accept that Bills from Parliament must have presidential assent and recognize past and upcoming parliamentary motions in the House tabled by the opposition.
One can simply imitate Roger Luncheon and say to the opposition; “Comrade, yuh talking to the ruling party which was elected; who elect you, Mr. Granger?
Nov 18, 2024
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