My critique of Nigel Hinds’ criticism of Clive Thomas

Feb 19, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
The PPP has gotten away with a lot in Guyana, because of our collective instincts to think in binary terms – us versus them. There is an unwillingness to engage complexity. The PPP cannot be riggers because the PNC are the riggers. The PPP cannot be corrupt because the PNC is corrupt. The PPP is democratic because the PNC is authoritarian.
This is part of the problem I have with Nigel Hinds’ recent critique of SARU’s announcement that Guyana lost over 300 billion dollars annually through corruption under the PPP. Hinds, generally a very astute commentator, unfortunately reduced the issue to numbers and to the political record of Clive Thomas and the WPA. It is that kind of obliviousness to the political sociology of the country that has allowed the PPP to get away with the narrative of self-virtue. Nigel Hinds does not set out to give the PPP a pass, but his twisting of the discourse away from its central objective of confronting the PPP’s corruption will end up achieving that objective.
Yes, we don’t want an unaccountable SARA that is above the law and we certainly don’t want any individual to have extreme power. Yes, you can challenge the methodology used by Clive Thomas in arriving at his estimation of how much we have lost.
Yes, you can castigate the WPA for abandoning the working class and Walter Rodney. But at the end of the day the central issue is confronting corruption under the PPP which I think Hinds would agree reached unprecedented heights under the PPP. It is not about making Jagdeo or any PPP leader homeless; it’s about dismantling the out of control mansion of corruption which afflicts Guyana. There must be a way to critique the WPA and Thomas and to argue over the accuracy of numbers without discrediting the genuine effort to combat the cancer of corruption.
David Hinds

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