Sacking of Bheri Ramsaran: A theoretical note

May 07, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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There have been countless Indian intellectuals and Indian politicians who have explained to the Indian people of this country that if they continue to give the PPP an electoral blank cheque, the PPP will not have any psychological motive to behave as democratic governors with moral weight, accountability and transparency in the way they administer the affairs of the state.
Science cannot explain political behavior, because humans are not deterministic machines but the connection between guaranteed power and authoritarian behaviour is almost a scientific law. If a race of people in a plural society over a long period of time continues to allow its party to dominate society because of their vote, the politics of invincibility, contempt and destruction will set in.
This is what has happened to the PPP. Guaranteed power has made the PPP feel it is invincible. The leadership of the PPP feels in their collective soul that Indians will always vote for them thus, they will govern Guyana forever. Such a pathological pattern has destroyed both the PPP and Guyana.
The PPP became so emboldened with guaranteed power that its leaders felt they could do whatever they want with state institutions. After seven elections (1957, 1960, 1992, 1997, 2001, 2006, 2011) in which the Indian ballot put the PPP in government, the PPP lost its moral compass and became a corrupt, undemocratic cabal. It couldn’t change direction because there was no electoral threat to its hegemony so repeated success at each election, reinforced the feeling of invincibility.
The first casualties in such morbid politics were the Indian people themselves. Contempt for a constituency is bound to step in if a docile ethnic community keeps voting for a party that does not perform.
The atrophy at UG where the Indians are a majority in the student population; the exorbitant bridge toll; the lack of street lights in Berbice and Essequibo and Indian villages in Regions Three and Four; the ruin of the sugar industry; the threat to sugar workers’ pension over the weakening of the NIS; lack of passport, birth certificate and driver’s licence facilities in Berbice were flagrant pieces of evidence that the PPP was not obsessed with delivery to the constituencies that voted for it.
This is where psychology becomes weird. Even the PPP itself at the mental level was paralyzed by the permanent licence of power. The PPP couldn’t bring itself to get absorbed with doing things for the Indian working class districts because the contempt for such people prevented a rational awakening. This is what I mean by psychology becoming weird. No greater example of the contempt is the PPP’s explanation to Berbicians that the bridge toll is the same as when they crossed with the ferry.
The politics of invincibility and contempt looks like it is coming to an end. This is because guaranteed power doesn’t appear to be guaranteed any longer. The election campaign has driven the PPP to paranoid levels because they sense that the Indian people have rejected PPP ownership of them. Once the PPP had the threat of losing Indian votes driven home to them, Indian constituencies would have been given unlimited attention.
That never happened in the past. It is happening now. Enter Bheri Ramsaran. It was unthinkable if the election was a three-way race for the PPP to have sacked Bheri Ramsaran no matter the level of criminal or moral depravity.  The PPP has tolerated the most abominable, immoral and criminal behaviour from both its first tier and secondary leadership.
Bheri Ramsarran is one of the longest serving PPP stalwarts and a Janet Jagan favourite. Prior to election 2015, he was an untouchable. Ramotar says he still likes him but why then did he still fire him? Because in an election campaign where the loss of power looks very real, the PPP felt that it could placate its Indian voters by being accountable to them, something unthinkable the past sixty years.
Ramsarran did a terrible thing to a woman and Guyanese are disgusted. But the PPP is scared. It was an Indian woman who was the victim and this isn’t looking good. The PPP feels it could lose votes, especially from our women folk, so it did what it never did before –discipline one of its own.
The Indian people need to internalize the lesson of the sacking of Ramsaran. Had they threatened the PPP long ago, this country would have been a far more developed and democratic society. They need to see the political reason for the sacking – the PPP doesn’t want to lose their votes. The PPP should have lost those votes many, many moons ago.

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