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It’s all about colours

May 09, 2015 Editorial

It is all about colours. One party opts to adopt a colour and immediately anyone wearing any garment, particularly shorts and jerseys bearing that colour, is seen to be associated with that political party. This colour thing is markedly common, given that football clubs have colours.
Guyana’s Golden Jaguars ask that supporters deck themselves in yellow. The result is that whenever the team happens to be playing in Guyana the stands appear to be a sea of yellow. There was a time when Guyanese going to support the local cricket team were asked to wear green. The result was not dissimilar from what happens during the football games.
As fate would have it, both green and yellow happen to be the colour of the largest opposition grouping in the country. So it is here that things get dicey.  When the People’s National Congress held the primaries-type elections to select a party leader after Robert Corbin had stepped down, there were two distinct factions.
The faction headed by Brigadier David Granger wore green; the other headed by Carl Greenidge wore yellow.  It is now history that Granger defeated Greenidge, so green became the colour of the party and remains so to this day. And with the coalition between A Partnership for National Unity and the Alliance For Change, yellow is now prominent once more.
It is remarkable that no one contended that there was overwhelming support for the Granger-Greenidge coalition. In short, yellow is no longer the colour of Carl Greenidge.
Red has long been the colour of the People’s Progressive Party. It has also been the colour of struggle, particularly the struggle of the workers, so much so that across the world workers during their Labour Day parades wear red jerseys or shirts as a show of solidarity. One can imagine the smiles or the confusion when members of the ruling PPP saw members of the opposition wearing red.
Surely, one question or observation could have been that the opposition party was supporting the PPP, because a political party cannot usurp the colours of another. But former President Bharrat Jagdeo at one time did appear in a green shirt and when jokingly questioned about his political support, he said that he was not ceding colours to anyone. Simply put, he was prepared to wear any colour at any time without acknowledging that it belonged to any party.
However, that is not the case with some entities. In fact, people bought their coloured clothing some years ago and still wear them, but refrain from doing so at this the time of the silly season. Of course, if the wearer is a supporter of one or other of the parties then that supporter is likely to wear the colour.
But there are workplaces that do take objection. For example, public servants, at this election time, would be wise not to wear any of the colours. A simple mistake could place that worker in a position that he or she would wish to avoid.
State entities present a different picture. Given that Guyana is so politicized, people in the state media are immediately perceived to be supporters of the ruling party, although that may not be the case. It was no surprise that employees in the state media openly wore the colours associated with the ruling party. It would have been most interesting if any of them had worn the colours associated with the main opposition party.
It was this that sparked a measure of controversy when someone reported that the Guyana Oil Company banned its workers from wearing the green jersey at this time. However, according to the report, the workers could wear the red. This suggested something that should be unheard of in the workplace.
But then again, times have changed, some say for the worse.  There was a time when Permanent Secretaries would not be caught dead near to a political platform. These days they are not only near, but they are also on. They campaign for a political party openly. So much for political neutrality and colours.

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