Life’s phenomenal surprises: The PPP in opposition

Aug 19, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Raised on the mythology that its founder, Cheddi Jagan, was the greatest citizen Guyana produced, and that the PPP was born to inherit the destiny of this country, PPP leaders from Cheddi Jagan onwards up to the remaining months in power in 2015, believed that such was its special place in Guyanese history that it would always win a general election and forever be in power.
Armed with that mythological aura, all PPP leaders cut a figure of messianic embodiment. Most PPP leaders carried themselves as if they owned Guyana.
Rohee, Jagdeo, Roger Luncheon, Gail Teixeira and Robeson Benn head the list. Bibi Shadick was obnoxiously all-powerful.
To see these people and their underlings perform when authority was in their hands, was as if the citizens were animals and they could bark and shout at them because they owned the animals.
Based on that assessment, I once did a column in which I posited that one night, a PPP governor would go to a night club, see a woman he wanted and demanded to have her, because whatever the PPP wants in Guyana it can have.
I never knew that such an atrocity in fact occurred in real life; that it did happen with “Killamaan” at a party in Berbice.
I am beginning to rethink my theory on the PPP’s response to the 2011 elections results
Many of us, including this columnist, believed that the PPP was shocked into disbelief at what happened. Our polemic was centred on the PPP’s long incumbency that made them take Berbicians for granted and that the Berbician rebellion taught the PPP a lesson. But maybe we were wrong.
It was the PPP’s 2011 campaign manager, Robert Persaud, who was the first PPP official to offer an explanation for the loss.
He said Berbicians were so assured of the PPP’s electoral invincibility (my words) that they just didn’t bother to go out to vote. Rohee became the torch-bearer of that song. By the time 2011 was over, PPP leaders were convinced that the defeat was because Berbicians were too complacent.
Is it possible that at the psychological level, PPP leaders believe that GECOM and the ABC countries conspired to rig the 2015 poll?
In arriving at concepts, there should be no place for emotions. Dr. Vindhya Persaud, PPP parliamentarian, was acidic in her condemnation of certain PPP leaders while in office and she castigated them for not entering Parliament.
But she went on to refer to the APNU-AFC administration as the de facto government. Is it possible that at the psychological level, this woman sincerely believes the PPP was not defeated in the 2015 voting?
I could vividly see even educated people saying that I am talking nonsense; the PPP knew it failed sugar workers and that is why Berbicians rebelled. I could see them saying that the PPP knows it got beaten in 2015. Do we really know what lies inside the psychology of autocratic leaders?
I guess the debate will go on, but the focus is now on the PPP in Parliament as to how they will adjust to the fall from power. Can they adjust? I doubt it. Jagdeo isn’t going to live out a normal life. Mr. Jagdeo ruled Guyana as if he owned it.
An autocrat like Jagdeo cannot simply make the transition from invincible strongman to humble debater in Parliament. It seldom happens and it will not happen inside the world of Bharrat Jagdeo.
I lived under President Forbes Burnham’s iron grip of Guyana, but in all honesty there was never the possessive mentality as with Jagdeo, and the reasons were crystal clear. Burnham did not succeed in controlling the country as he would have liked.
There was enormous opposition to Burnham’s domination of Guyana to the point where Burnham became subdued and resigned. Walter Rodney piled on enormous pressure on Burnham
It is when a ruler’s hegemony is unchallenged that the possessive mentality gets out of hand. Once an oligarch reduces his fiefdom to submission, then the ownership pathology takes over.
There is very little evidence to support the theory that Burnham reduced Guyanese to a submissive state. On the contrary, the opposition to Burnham was relentless and it occurred on all fronts – opposition parties, trade unions, civil society, the legal community, the University of Guyana, the Indian communities, sugar workers, Linden, ABC countries, certain CARICOM neighbours.
This kind of vortex Jagdeo escaped. By the time he was nearing the end of his presidency, Jagdeo’s hegemony had no parallel in West Indian history. Jagdeo became the king of Guyana and he acted like a king. Jagdeo cannot live as an ordinary politician.

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Life’s phenomenal surprises: The PPP in opposition

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