‘Death and the Maiden’ and Donald Ramotar

Sep 30, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

My preferred movie director is Roman Polanski. I think he is way ahead of any other director (but certainly not in the league of the brilliant, exceptional Italian trio – Bernardo Bertolucci of “Last Tango in Paris”; Michelangelo Antonio of “Zabriskie Point”; Federico Fellini of “La Dolce Vita” – three exceptional directors of three exceptional films).
One of the best movies I cherish is made by Roman Polanski, “Death and the Maiden.” The title is taken from one of the compositions of Schubert. It tells the story of torture under a South America fascist regime in the seventies (Chile is implied). While this medical doctor tortured his victim, he played, “Death and the Maiden.” For him it was the appropriate symphony for his victims to listen to. They were his maids who he was sending to their death.
The story is about the post-dictatorship government whose president did the unthinkable by implementing a commission to investigate atrocities under the previous regime. The nation was unsure if it would happen. They wondered if the president could be that bold. There is a lesson to be learnt here. A leader who comes into power in the midst of an authoritarian system can only extirpate the tyrannical foundations of dictatorship if he is independent of the people whom he succeeded in power.
You don’t have to look further for examples. Guyana stands out brilliantly with Desmond Hoyte. Hoyte was not facilitated by the seniors in the PNC when Forbes Burnham died. He didn’t owe his presidency to them. So he virtually dissolved the Burnhamites in the government and instituted a totally new Cabinet and created new bureaucracy heads. What Hoyte did is that he gave himself room to manoeuvre.
Another example was Tony Blair. When Blair took over the leadership of the Labour Party in the UK, he demobilized the Left in the party. When he won power, there was a completely new set of Labour leaders in Government and Blair single-handedly turned Labour into a Thatcherite entity. There was no one from the Left in the Labour Party to confront Blair on his neo-liberal direction. Blair had room to manoeuvre.
Labour lost the election under the Blairites, the Blairites are gone and interestingly the Left in Labour is now at the top of the pyramid. Labour is led by an avowed leftist politician, Ed Miliband, the son of the respected Marxist academic, Ralph Miliband, whose seminal work, “The State in a Capitalist Society” is on the reading list in most universities in a course on politics in advanced societies.
If Labour wins, Miliband has space to manouvre. He is not indebted to the Blairites.
We can go back to Guyana with Bharrat Jagdeo. Mr. Jagdeo used the 2001 election to overthrow Mrs. Janet Jagan and his controllers in the PPP hierarchy. As soon as this was done, the Cabinet and bureaucracy heads became creations of Jagdeo. After 2001, Mr. Jagdeo had enormous space to manoeuvre.
The origins of the Ramotar presidency have nothing in common with the Hoyte, Blair, Miliband and Jagdeo situations. In this context, Mr. Ralph Ramkarran’s adumbration that Ramotar can create spectacular history by moving away from the long, long political poison of British Guiana and Independent Guyana is a weak thesis.
Donald Ramotar hasn’t got even a tiny room of space to manouevre to create this history. Mr. Ramotar belongs to a formation that he didn’t create, that was created for him, and he remains an underling in that formation. With each passing day, as the main players in the PPP hierarchy takes more latitude, Ramotar’s stature in the PPP’s power structure wanes.
It was no accident that the man who gave Ramotar the presidency went behind his back and told the President of the West Indies Cricket Board that he will see that the signing of the Cricket Bill is delayed. Mr. Ramotar is so powerless and comfortable with his own mediocrity that those within the State but not in the PPP hierarchy are emboldened to pursue directions independent of Ramotar. Two examples will suffice – Robeson Benn and Charles Ramson.
Much to Mr. Ramkarran’s chagrin, there will be no phenomenal creation of historical magic under Ramotar. If it does happen, it will come from the acceptance of Rohee, Teixeira, Luncheon and others. What Ramkarran keeps doing is to deny the obfuscation of Mr. Ramotar in the power structure. Mr. Ramkarran writes as if Ramotar is his own man and will do what the post-dictatorship president did in “Death and the Maiden.” I repeat – there is going to be a big fight to replace Mr. Ramotar in the next general election.

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‘Death and the Maiden’ and Donald Ramotar

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