The APNU-AFC is taking a road that is paved with chasms

Dec 19, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Politicians do not learn. Of all the categories of human behaviour, including repeat offenders, powerful politicians tend not to want to mend their misdirected attitudes. After a long era of autocratic politics under President Burnham, the PPP returned to power in 1992.
Even with Jagan at the helm, the PPP learnt absolutely nothing from history. Jagan traveled on the same road that engendered his down fall in the sixties. When he died, the people he left in charge were eager to surpass the excess of the Burnham regime.
Desmond Hoyte was redemptive but he too went in unhistorical directions. He turned his back on some historical moments that could have seen him in office longer than the seven years he had. Hoyte refused to accord the PPP any hearing but he also shut out the WPA. Had he acceded to WPA’s insistence on inclusive politics and constitutional changes, this country would not have ever seen someone named Bharrat Jagdeo. Hoyte’s refusal to learn from the past brought into being the presence of Jagdeo.
Twenty-three years of the PPP was essentially a journey into nihilism. Guyana hardly worked under the PPP. Even if one was willing to turn a blind eye to corruption and incompetence, it was the undemocratic nature of PPP reign that made it not only more tyrannical than Burnham’s Government but an organization that was indecently unhistorical.
The PPP is gone; voted out of office but are we on a breathtaking journey using a different pathway than the ones Burnham, Jagan, Hoyte, and Jagdeo traversed? The jury is still out on that. From what I have seen in a mere seven months, I am not brimming with optimism.
On Thursday night, I dropped off Kaieteur News’s reporter, Kiana Wilburg, to Parliament. What I saw was the creeping shadows of Burnham and Jagdeo. Parliament now sits inside a metal jungle. The barriers have completely taken over Parliament Building.
This is coming from a new government that passed a parliamentary motion when it was in opposition to remove even the meager barriers the PPP Government had put up. To date, only one citizen has publicly condemned this double standard – the Chairman of the Trade Union Congress, Lincoln Lewis.
No other Guyanese has seen the wisdom of pointing to that little spark of hypocrisy. And why should they? It is just a little spark. Only a nation of fools does not know that a conflagration begins from a tiny spark. Someone from outside of Guyana should educate Guyanese that a tiny spark, if not doused, will cause a fire.
From the metal barriers, we moved to the salary increases that were made retroactive to the very next month that the Coalition came into power. Many missed the retroactive nature of the increases. It meant that it is a recorded fact that the post-PPP regime gave itself a salary increase one month after it won the general elections.
We come to the marijuana law. Any politician in this country, that accepts that a law that jails citizens for a few grams of marijuana in the 21st century, is not worthy of being in charge of any country in the western hemisphere. But we are not seeing any eagerness to extirpate this nasty, obnoxious atrocity that President Hoyte perpetrated on this country. We are told that before Hoyte’s nonsense is exorcized from the law books, there must be widespread consultations but where were the widespread consultations on the Terrorism Bill? One would like to think there needs to be more dialogue with the Guyanese society on the implications of the Terrorism Bill than on Hoyte’s anachronistic legislation.
Here are the words of the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) on the Terrorism Bill; “In its present state this Bill would allow the State to perpetrate serious violations of due process and fair trial rights and should not be allowed to pass into law.”
I confess I haven’t seen or read the Bill but surely the GHRA has to be insane to utter those words. And I don’t think the organization is even irrational much less insane. These words are so disturbing that they need to be repeated for emphasis; “In its present state this Bill would allow the State to perpetrate serious violations of due process and fair trial rights and should not be allowed to pass into law.”
The PPP made the fatal mistake of thinking that people embraced it in 1992 because they had enough of the PNC so it could get away with excesses. Is APNU-AFC repeating the same tragedy?

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The APNU-AFC is taking a road that is paved with chasms

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