Mark Benschop, APNU+AFC, the masses and the asses

Jan 29, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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The local government elections will be a moment of political fascination. We have politicians from the APNU-AFC Coalition Government asking Georgetowners to vote for their slate to possess the authority to administer the capital city.
Georgetown in Guyana is no ordinary city. It is the capital where the nerve centres of central government, industries, commerce, information technology, tertiary educational institutions, religious denominations, headquarters of security forces, and the major restaurants, retail stores and sports venues are located.
When you govern Georgetown, you have formidable power at your disposal. The City Council has some serious authority at its command. Misuse of that power can have dangerous and damaging consequences.
We should contemplate for enduring hours how we vote. For me, attitude of a politician is important. I cannot vote for a man/woman to become my Mayor or President and he/she never ever voiced a word of protest about anything, was never there when people were victimized because of their ethnicity, when students were brutalized by the police, and when workers were exploited mercilessly by the state and the private sector. Then this man/woman disrespects my intelligence and says to me; “Vote for me.”
I have Wortmanville roughness in me and I will tell you to get lost. Politicians think humans are fools. Sugar workers need to earn a living and the Wales workers must be given alternative employment, but sugar workers will look like fools if they see Jagdeo and the PPP as their salvation. These were the very politicians that weakened the sugar industry and endangered the very economic existence of sugar workers.
The leader of an elite, middle class party of mostly Guyanese Portuguese embedded in the commercial classes of Guyana, once yelled out, “the masses are asses.” That was in the campaign battles of the sixties. His name was Peter D’Aguiar and his party was The United Force.
D’Aguiar was angry at the way African Guyanese followed the PNC and Indians the PPP. He felt that both parties didn’t have the interests of their supporters at heart but were only using them. The choice of words was inappropriate and indecent. But the point is that throughout history, the labouring classes have inevitably displayed poor intelligence in the way they have gravitated towards leaders and the way they have voted for them.
We are seeing the vast use of intelligence by the American people, as Bernie Sanders has caught up with Mrs. Clinton in the polls. Suspicion of Mrs. Clinton’s conspiratorial character is ubiquitous among voters
The City Council forcefully removed vendors who have been selling on the Merriman Mall for three decades. Sixty percent of these vendors are women and cannot be classified by any sensible economist as financially elegant. The vendors took their frustration to the Office of the President and mounted a picket.
Mark Benschop was the only politician contesting the March local government elections that stood with the vendors and showed solidarity. Not one politician from the AFC, PNC and WPA even passed by and offered a word of comfort. Not one of them penned a letter asking for a re-think. Not one of them uttered even a fraction of a word in disagreement with what the City Council did to these working class humans.
Now these very parties – AFC and PNC and WPA, also known as The Coalition— has drawn up a list of contestants for the March poll. The coalition is asking me as a Georgetowner to vote for their candidates. I am not saying I wouldn’t vote for The Coalition, but I would like to enter into a small debate with people from the APNU+AFC. Why should I leave Mark Benschop and vote for The Coalition?
I need for someone to explain why I should overlook a candidate that stood with the poor vendors. In other words, APNU+AFC personnel, if they are going to get my vote, have to explain why they didn’t show support for the vendors as Benschop did.
I don’t want to hear, and please keep it away from my ear, that you disagreed with what the Town Clerk did. Even if you didn’t want to take the midday sun like Benschop, where were your words when the vendors were terrorized? It is in situations like these that voters have to prove D’Aguiar wrong and show intelligence.
In another column I will look at the candidates for the March poll, suffice it to say some “eye pass” seems to be going on. Vendors were removed just before the March elections, yet Georgetowners are being asked to vote in as councilors, people who committed this “eye pass.” I hope the masses aren’t asses.

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