Losing elections: The invincibility code

May 19, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I doubt very much that any scholar can do justice to an analysis of the loss of power by the PPP in just one book. My feeling is that it will take more than one volume. The story is a complex one. It involves a philosophical investigation of the PPP going right back to the first election victory of the PPP in 1957.
The analyst has to devote a huge part of the study to the role Cheddi and Janet played in molding the PPP. Then there is the assessment of its politics in opposition. No doubt an entire volume would have to be centered on the twenty three years in power. Then there was the role played by personalities inside the PPP leadership since power was attained in 1992.
In looking at the fall of the PPP that began in 2011, the towering influence of Jagdeo has to get special emphasis. But I would argue that what Jagdeo became was natural, because the seeds were planted by Mrs.Jagan long before Jagdeo came out of napkins. There is no space here to elaborate on the historical evolution of the PPP and the role of Dr. and Mrs. Jagan, but no discussion will be complete without an examination of the invincibility culture. What this column and forthcoming ones will do is examine some of the causal factors in the PPP’s untergang.
Most definitely, there is no one-factor cause. In 2011 the PPP could have won. In 2015, the possibility of victory still existed – look at the narrow loss. What exactly went wrong? It is academically useless to keep focusing on the role of Jagdeo as the main reason for the state of sadism in the PPP the last fifteen years.
This writer would argue that Jagdeo took things to extreme lengths but there were other leaders in the PPP who were Jagdeoites long before Jagdeo became what he became. We start with the invincibility ethos that the PPP embraced after the split between Burnham and Jagan in the first half of the fifties. No leader in the PPP from the nineties onwards has been able to escape the tentacles of the invincibility culture that the two Jagans stamped on the face of the PPP.
When Jagdeo became President no one in the PPP knew much about him. In the Jagdeo libel trial, Roger Luncheon testified that he first knew of Jagdeo after 1992. This newcomer without baggage soon fell victim to the invincibility cult of the PPP.
Has the analyst found it strange that Ralph Ramkarran declined to join the election campaign and refused to endorse the coalition in the final days of the campaign? Doesn’t one find it strange that Nadira Jagan threw in her support for the PPP in the dying moments of the campaign?
What is the reason for Ramkarran’s no for the opposition and Jagan’s yes for PPP? It may have to do with their understanding of what the PPP is. The holy grail of invincibility may have determined their decision.
The invincibility mythology was perpetuated by Cheddi Jagan himself. Its essential feature is that the PPP is the founder of modern Guyana and is a politically superior religion to other political cultures. Using the theory of natural resentment in human nature, the Jagans warned the PPP membership that they must expect to be crucified, but they will survive to lead Guyana because that is the PPP’s manifest destiny.
This religion permeated the psychic foundation of each PPP leader. PPP leaders grew up to think that they will face the wrath of those who cannot and will not accept them, but history will absolve the PPP. This superiority complex is present in every PPP leader.
Our social scientists have done a poor job at analyzing the PPP in power, but if and when they do and they study the role of the invincibility motif in the evolution of the PPP they will find countless of examples. One should remind readers that the dialogue between the PNC and the PPP broke down when Roger Luncheon at the table told Desmond Hoyte that the two parties were not equal. Hoyte then felt insulted and broke off the talks.
In perhaps all countries in the world, a minority government would have tried to rule with some form of diluted concessions to the opposition. The invincibility culture in the PPP prevented the PPP after 2011 from any sustained dialogue with the combined opposition. The PPP leaders felt that it was unthinkable to share power, however little it was.

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Losing elections: The invincibility code

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