The PNC has turned out to be a most bizarre creature

Jul 27, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Whoever becomes the head of the PNC this afternoon, it will not matter, because that person will have to face the rising chagrin of an enormous number of people in Guyana, as to why the PNC is allowing the PPP Government to do the unjust, mean and horrible things to Guyana without responding in a no-nonsense manner.
That criticism sooner or later is going to kill the PNC if the PNC does not react. For many people in this nation, the great PNC has become something that is weird, strange and bizarre.
Let us look at human nature, and I mean the main trend in human nature since civilization began. A prosecutor asked a judge to teach you a lesson because as a policeman you should not have taken a bribe. He asked for the maximum jail term and the judge agreed.
You served your time, lost your job, pension and maybe a big part of your life. Later down the road, the very prosecutor took a bribe to hide evidence. What will be your attitude towards this man? Human nature will kick in. You will want him to be given the harshest treatment possible. And that is human nature as we know it, since civilization began.
After 1968 when the PNC took over completely the reins of government until the 1992 elections, the PPP crucified the PNC. The PPP literally drove the PNC out of office, with even a giant like Hoyte suffering in the process. Since 1992, the PNC has stood helplessly and looked on as the PPP virtually destroyed Guyana.
Every depraved, undemocratic, immoral, racially-oriented, incestuous, corrupt act of the PNC Government has been exceeded by the PPP in billions of ways that are sickening, insane and maybe bordering on the uncivilized.
What this country has become under the leadership of Mr. Jagdeo, and for three years under Mr. Ramotar, puts Guyana as one of the most abominable and miasmic oligarchic systems since World War II. Young men and women since 1999 have used their position of political power to amass stupendous wealth which they don’t hide but flaunt ostentatiously.
The level of victimization along race and class lines since 1999 makes Mr. Burnham a shining star in post-colonial politics. Poverty as we see today never existed in the horrendous ways we see under the PPP Government. The state as a toy in the hands of political families and their extended networks of relatives and friends is a social morbidity that would never have taken place, even if the PNC had remained in power for the next one thousand years.
What is taking place in Guyana can only be described by one word in the sense that the great German philosopher, Hannah Arendt used it – evil. As an academic trained in history and philosophy at three universities and as a political activist all my life, the evil that is taking place here appears in my psyche and soul as nothing more than something that goes beyond imagination.
It is not that the PPP tyranny is episodic, situational, reactive. The PPP’s authoritarian train has been in runaway mode since the 2001 elections. The PPP’s political brutalities, corrupt transactions and social depravities have been relentless and ubiquitous.
In 2014, Guyana stands deeper in social filth than when it was enveloped in political and social abomination from 1978 onwards. The difference with 1978-1985 and 2001-2014 is that in the first period, the opposition was energized, energetic, and unyielding with the Burnham Government. In the second period, there is no opposition to the insanities of twenty-two years of PPP rule.
There is absolutely no way, an opposition party should accept this atrophy since 1999. And no opposition in the smallest of countries with the smallest of populations would accept this except the PNC. The PNC was bound to suffer significant levels of alienation from its huge base of support, because the normal mind cannot accept an opposition party being so passive in the face of dictatorship. It doesn’t happen in the real world.
The PNC, more than any other political party, in the arena of politics today in the world, has a historic duty to its supporters and the Guyanese people to seek a confrontation with the PPP, because it was the PPP that harassed and removed the PNC Government for undemocratic behaviour.
Today, the PPP’s semi-civilized behaviour is of the kind the likes of which this country has never seen in colonial times and under Forbes Burnham. In other words, history and morality compel the PNC to say to the PPP, we will not permit you to do the very things you accused us of and removed us for, therefore we have a historic and moral duty to stop you. But the PNC ain’t stopping anything.

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