The genes of an aging dinosaur

May 11, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

Ethnic solidarity is perhaps the worst instinct in Homo sapiens. Ethnic solidarity is dangerous in the sense that though a person feels that he/she should support the race that he/she belongs to, there is very much alive the danger that this racial support could lead to the approval, acceptance  and emotional embrace of the worst acts of depravities.
Humans don’t have to look far from their eyes for the two most graphic examples – slavery of African people by the Caucasian race and Germany’s support for Hitler’s insane nationalism.
Would it not be a fascinating study to probe the mind of someone like Rickey Singh or David Dabydeen and thousands of Guyanese East Indians that are like them? How could a Guyanese Indian who lived under the rule of the PNC Government beg American icon, Jimmy Carter, to come to Guyana to help bring democracy and he came and was accepted by the President of the PNC Government, but they support a PPP Government that has vilified the US Ambassador because he brought a project to foster democracy in Guyana?
Only two words can explain this – ethnic solidarity. For many Guyanese Indians like Rickey Singh, David Dabydeen and others, it was right for Carter to come and throw out a government that was predominantly African but it is wrong for the Americans to come today, to encourage democratic thinking because it is an Indian Government that is in power.
Racial support blinds humans from seeing the immorality and ugly minds of those that belong to their own race group. This is certainly an evil fault of civilization.
It is not only in the Jimmy Carter episode in Guyana that we see the evil of ethnic embrace, but in countless other sins of the PPP as an organization. How can any Indian Guyanese look at his/her self in the mirror and pronounce the PPP as a better government than the PNC?
The evidence that the two governments are identical is overwhelming. But this writer takes the view that the PPP is a greater evil than the PNC. This is my belief as a Guyanese citizen who has decades of experience as a political activist, and decades of experience as a trained academic studying the politics and sociology of his country.
What goes through the mind of someone like Rickey Singh or David Dabydeen who can criticize the PNC for rigging elections but look at the PPP’s attitude to elections in today’s Guyana? Almost every section of Guyana wants local government elections except the PPP.
Wasn’t this the organization that cried for over twenty-five years for free and fair elections in Guyana? Look at the PPP’s attitude to free elections in today’s Guyana! It openly supported the retention of the then serving Chief Elections Officer when the proof against him as a fair administrator of national elections was as obvious as the greenness of the grass.
After coming to power in 1992 and being in office for twenty-one years now, the world has seen the genes of this sixty-year-old dinosaur named the People’s Progressive Party. And the genetic blueprint is the flawed structure that philosopher Arthur Koestler so beautifully described in his work.
To the eyes of any decent human in or out of Guyana, this party is just sick with the pursuit of naked and absolute power. It would take an entire column (which is forthcoming) to describe the situation with Roger Luncheon. An ailing administrator who is physically burdened in major ways because of his prolonged illness, this man refuses to step down. Only one explanation is valid – the quest to continue in power. This columnist believes that in no other country such an anomaly would exist.
In which other country would five or ten persons, behind closed doors, appoint the leader of a political party rather than democratic voting in a free membership election? It doesn’t happen in the 2ist century. Only in Guyana. Only in the PPP.
Mr. Ramotar was chosen as leader of the PPP and presidential candidate by appointment. Mr. Ramotar’s successor, Mr. Clement Rohee, was also appointed rather than elected. Where are the eyes of people who stood with the PPP from the time Jagan lost power in 1964 right up to 1992 when the PPP came to power? Surely they cannot be blind or stupid in that they cannot see that genetically the PPP is not an outfit that believes in some of philosophy’s sacred concepts like freedom, justice, liberty, equality, dignity of the human person, etc.
Every day in Guyana we see policemen, party apparatchiks, party leaders, party supporters, families of party leaders committing the most heinous crimes that the PPP is unapologetic about. This would never be accepted in other countries. The PPP is genetically defective. The result is evil.

---

---