Dear Benschop; read this 2016 letter by Nandlall

May 16, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Mark Benschop accused Anil Nandlall of political interference to bring about a conviction in his treason charge. Nandlall was the special prosecutor in the case, a position one wonders why Nandlall took in the first place; maybe to please the then-President Jagdeo. Nandlall fired back. His reaction was known even to babies confined to their cradles – “I did nothing wrong.” This explanation of Nandlall comes from the theory of Guyanese politics that Nandlall adumbrated in a very important letter in the Kaieteur News.
I would suggest to Mark Benschop and others who missed it to consult that missive. It offers a genetic theory of politics in Guyana that only Nandlall to date from the PPP has elongated on. Whether you hate or like Nandlall, he has formulated a theory of PPP politics. The date is Monday, December 19, 2016. The title is, “PPP Government in the 50s and after 1992 developed Guyana.” In his analysis, Nandlall posits that for each period the PPP ruled Guyana, there was progression and development.
He listed the periods 1957 to 1964 and 1992 to 2015. Then he juxtaposed the PNC periods; 1964 to 1992 and from 2015 onwards. Here is a small extract from that letter; “Whenever the PPP is in Government there is economic progress and freedom in this country; and whenever the PNC is in Government there is economic decline and authoritarianism.” I did a response. See my column of December 23, 2016 with the caption; “Anil Nandlall sent Kaieteur News a coin with one of its two faces rubbed off.”
Your first reaction to Nandlall’s theorizing is to dismiss it as asininity. But Nandlall wasn’t being facetious. His thinking reflects a Freudian embrace of the caste system and he has analysed the politics of the PPP based on the Hindu caste system. There is an inherent genetic superiority in the polemical submission of Nandlall. If an Indian-based party always brings progress when it is in power and an African-based party always generates backwardness when it is its turn to rule, then we are either talking about the caste system or genetic superiority.
Leave PPP leaders out of the scenario for just a moment and examine the works of those who write on Indians in Guyana and the problematic of Indians in political power like Ravi Dev, Ryhaan Shah, Aksharananda, Baytoram Ramharack, Lomarsh Roopnarine, Dolly Hassan among others.
Their narrative does not include Desmond Hoyte. Aksharananda is pellucid in his approach to Guyanese historiography. In a recent letter where he describes my adumbrations as miasmic, he posits that the current government is taking Guyana back to the authoritarian days when the PNC was in power.
Aksharananda was referring to 1964 to 1992. There was no concession to Hoyte; there was no acknowledgement that Jagdeo was far more a depraved president than Hoyte. Aksharananda, the holy man who is a school teacher was also trained in sociology, but his sociology sees no positive role for the Hoyte presidency.
These people will not include the Hoyte era in their polemics because it will pose conceptual problems for the kind of theories they espouse, like the one Nandlall offers. With a track record of trying to depoliticize power, bringing back meritocracy in the public bureaucracy and confronting race legacies, Hoyte was more innovative and transformative than Cheddi Jagan. The Indian polemicists will not recognize the seminal role in modern Guyanese governance of Desmond Hoyte.
Benschop can produce whatever evidence to show that he was framed by the Jagdeo regime and Nandlall was a player in the Jagdeoite conspiracy to jail him, but it would be to no avail
Armed with his theory of the genetic differences between Indians who exercised state power and Africans who had state authority in the Guyanese environment, Nandlall will not accept any wrongdoing on his part, not only in the Benschop treason case, but in any situation when he was Attorney-General.
Years will pass on; Donald Ramotar, Clement Rohee, Leslie Ramsammy, Roger Luncheon, Gail Teixeira, Charles Ramson, Indra Chandarpal and company will get old and move off the scene, but even if they do leave a memoir, it will in the most definitive way avoid the acknowledgement or any wrongdoing.
I sat a mere eight feet away from Gail Teixeira when she demanded of Vice Chancellor, Lawrence Carrington, that my UG contract be terminated. Ask Ms. Teixeira about that and amnesia or denial will step in. The Leslie Ramsammy case is the most egregious of the lot. There is actual evidence that he bought the spy equipment that Roger Khan used. And we all know the numbers Khan killed.

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