Only one pathway can save the PPP

Nov 14, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Canadian-based educator Harry Hergash enumerated several occasions during the minority government of President Donald Ramotar where the PPP refused to make concessions to and seek accommodation with the opposition which had the parliamentary majority.
There have been several delineations like Mr. Hergash’s since the 2011 General Elections results. There will be more. I would suggest what is needed in these analyses is an explanation for the PPP’s refusal to reach out which it has never done despite the claims of many PPP stalwarts that throughout its history it has.
I think the history shows that it hasn’t. It is left to independent minds to trace that history of this truculence. Many in the Working People’s Alliance have. Tacuma Ogunseye wrote about Jagan’s obduracy in talks in the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy (PCD).  I saw for myself how the PPP completely tossed aside its comradely intimacy with the Working People’s Alliance after the PPP’s election victory in 1992. In fact, a creeping hostility came over the PPP leadership as the years wore on. By the time he died in 1997, Dr. Jagan’s relationship with the WPA’s leadership was non-existent.
One theoretical explanation about communist in-fighting is that when fraternal communist parties quarrel among themselves after power is achieved a bestial level of viciousness creeps in and there is more violence directed against “old comrades” than toward the right-wing detractors.
The history books are replete with scholarship supportive of this theory. The Bolsheviks in Russia literally imploded after Lenin died. Stalin literally killed off most of the founders of the Russian Revolution.  Joshua Nkomo was more viciously attacked by the Mugabe Government than any white organization that opposed Mugabe. General Ochoa was made a hero of the Cuban Revolution for his victory in Angola. But in a fall-out with Fidel Castro he was executed while many anti-Castro critics were jailed rather than killed.
The PPP became bitter with the WPA to the point where the PPP leaders were saying the most unpleasant things about their former comrades. I remember I met Donald Ramotar at the Bakewell outlet when he was General-Secretary of the PPP. Ramotar’s opinion of Andaiye was so inelegant that it annoyed me because I strongly disagreed with his pronouncement.
From Mrs. Janet Jagan right down, the WPA was scorned. Mrs. Jagan openly declared that the WPA couldn’t win an election but wanted power through the backdoor. President Jagdeo had harsh words to say about Clive Thomas after the Globe Trust fiasco. Rupert Roopnaraine’s appointment as Registrar of Critchlow Labour College   further heightened the eagerness to stop the state’s subvention to the College
Let us for the sake of polemical exchanges posit that the PPP will win the minority presidency in 2020. The same attitude will be adopted as in the 10th Parliament. The same ancient mind-set that proved stubborn in the PCD confabulations; that ostracized the WPA, that refused to dialogue with the AFC and APNU in 2012 will be at Freedom House. What is the explanation? The curse of mythology.
The PPP will remain imprisoned in that curse unless it breaks away. Whether it can do so is up for discussion but what is not debatable is that unless it chooses a new pathway, it will remain haunted by the myths that Cheddi Jagan and Mrs. Jagan planted in its collective psyche. What are those myths?
Jagan is the essential hero of Guyana. The PPP is the most historic political entity Guyana has been blessed with. PPP leaders were never allowed to implant there futuristic ideas because of envy, conspiracy and hatred.
The PPP must be made to fulfill its destined role in Guyana and the PPP must forever be watchful of those who resent it. PPP leaders are of a superior character to their opponents. One of the most obnoxious examples of this culture of mythology is contained in the PPP’s press release on the rejection of Government’s intention of turning Red House into the libraries of all past Presidents.
The release said Red House should house the papers of the PPP Presidents and not Burnham and Hoyte who do not belong in the same category. In other words, Jagdeo is in the same category with Jagan.
Any honest academic would find that unpalatable. But it is simple to understand. Jagdeo was a PPP President therefore he stands above any other non-PPP President. It is a sad situation. But unless future PPP leaders accept that the PPP and its leaders are mere mortals and are just like any other organization and leaders with strengths and faults, an uncertain future awaits the PPP.

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