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Analyzing Donald Ramotar’s politics

Jun 16, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In a recent column captioned, “Donald Ramotar: A Freudian analysis,” (June 3, 2016) I attempted to explain why Ramotar did the unthinkable and openly defended someone like Kwame McCoy who is really a figure of disdain and revulsion in Guyana. The construct I used was the Vanguard Party. The difference between the PPP and every other party since the fifties onwards is the absence of the acceptance of the Vanguard Party as part of the leadership’s psychology. On the PPP carries this mental symbol.
Some clarification is needed since under Forbes Burnham, the Sophia Declaration of 1975 made the PNC into a vanguard party. The difference with the PPP‘s vanguard party and the PNC’s vanguard party was that the average leader in the PNC under Burnham never really thought of the PNC in those terms. The PNC’s leadership saw Burnham as special and the Burnhamite state was the vehicle through which they concentrated their energies in changing Guyana. For someone like Hamilton Green, it was Burnham’s party that was to be protected. It was the same with Ptolemy Reid. Desmond Hoyte never saw the PNC as a vanguard party.
The essential difference with the PPP and all other political parties is the psychological acceptance of the vanguard party. Every PPP leader was brought up with the psychological and philosophical education that the PPP is the embodiment of history; that it is destined to be persecuted but will survive to hold destiny in its hands.
For every setback that the PPP endured, it saw that as a part of the working out of history; that history will justify the greatness of the PPP. As I pen this column, I am absolutely convinced that the PPP hierarchy sees the 2015 loss of power as a temporary setback; that the PPP will soon be back in power. Why does the hierarchy feel this way? Because that is the education. The vanguard party is special, is historically irrepressible; its leaders, ranks and cadres are special and the party will always triumph.
This explains why the PPP has never sought to discipline its erring cadres no matter how egregious was the crime. The higher up the ladder was the leader, the more untouchable he/she became. These party loyalists were treated as special because they serve the vanguard party. They are not seen as ordinary mortals. On the contrary, once a comparison has to be made between a member of the Vanguard Party and an ordinary human, the choice was automatic.
It is doubtful any party, no matter how fascist or authoritarian, would have retained the services of Kellawan Lall. Lall drifted from one abomination to another and in each situation, the party’s protective hands were there. It was not possible to do away with Lall because to do so was to dump a loyal servant of the Vanguard Party.
It is this context one must understand Ramotar’s frenetic protection of Kwame McCoy. As I pointed out in the first part of this analysis, Ramotar has always been the most doctrinaire of PPP leaders apart from the Jagans.
It was no accident that he was chosen to represent the PPP for eight years in Czechoslovakia on the editorial board of the journal of the world communist movement, “World Marxist Review.” It was no accident that after the PPP won the 1992 elections, he was chosen over all the other leaders to run the PPP rather than be given a Cabinet portfolio.
It is no accident, then, that he is the only major PPP figure that has openly come out in support of Kwame McCoy. It is doubtful that any other important figure in the PPP pyramid will follow him. Ramotar is far more loyal to McCoy than any other major PPP leader and this is because it comes out of his dogmatic approach to communist politics.
The dangerous thinking in the mind of a doctrinaire Marxist like Ramotar, is his/her dismissal of the ordinary folks. Asked about the feelings of Mark Benschop after the alleged assault of him by McCoy, I am sure Ramotar would be dismissive of Benschop. Asked about the feelings of my nephew when Ramotar’s son had accidently struck him down and broken his leg, I am sure, Ramotar would be dismissive.
One must understand that in the scheme of things, apparatchiks of the vanguard party are not ordinary people. They are historical figures. Kwame McCoy would be special because he chose the path of the vanguard party. He works for the vanguard party. Kellawan Lall was special; he belonged to the vanguard party. The vanguard party is invincible and therefore its loyalists must be defended at all times.

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