The anti-parking meter protest: History that went unnoticed

Jul 04, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I am repeating what was contained in a column on the anti-parking meter protest. I missed two of the demonstrations because of rain. I carried a placard in four of them. In that column I described how shocked I was at what I saw.
There were about sixty young Indian girls, dressed up in nice clothes. They were very vocal, very demonstrative. These were not young people shipped in from working class rural areas. These were not south Georgetown young people in working class clothes angry at something the police did in their neighbourhood.
These were white collar workers many of whom I suspect have universities degrees and were annoyed at the price they had to pay for parking, meaning they had cars. I am in my sixties and I have travelled the pathways of pickets, demonstrations and protest all my life. At the height of the Rodney bandwagon in the seventies, I never saw such types of Guyanese on the picket line. The PPP, WPA, the middle class formation, GUARD and civil society failed to galvanize such types of people to join protest action.
From my experience in the picket line I never saw such types of young women boldly demonstrating and shouting slogans at the top of their heads. In that column, too, I stated that not even at the height of protest against the Burnham Government in the seventies did the picket line see so many Portuguese Guyanese.
The weekly anti-parking meter demonstrations outside City Hall, every Friday at noon, were a phenomenal sight to behold in the historical context of class politics for me and I have more than forty years of protesting behind me. Middle class young people, joined by hundreds of middle class folks from the forties up, plus a sizeable presence of working class Guyanese were out there.
I looked at those weekly gatherings and I saw the replacement of the AFC coming. I believe the birth of a third political party had its rudimentary start among those resourceful middle class folks in the anti-parking meter demonstrations.
Those very folks are going to challenge the two Leviathans – PPP and PNC – come 2020. It is from among those folks that a reincarnation of the AFC will take place. There is widespread feeling all over Guyana that the unique third force manifestation in the form of the AFC is gone. In those demonstrations, I believe there are AFC sympathizers who want the continuation of a third political party. I have been informed that a close relative of one of the AFC’s big wigs is one of the moving forces behind the contemplation of a third party.
Can this third party be the game changer? I think they can. They want another AFC type formation because they feel that the AFC went the wrong road. They wanted the AFC to be the balancer demanding changes and policies from a minority presidency rather than joining one of the two big trucks for fear of being swallowed up.
The WPA accusations against the PNC leadership will only reinforce that thinking. In discussions with Tacuma Ogunseye on this topic, he asked me if I don’t think this new formation will not be as disappointing as the other small parties.
The answer to that question has to be philosophically based. We never know what fate has in store for us. It can go either way. A third party can just get in and become like the rest of uncaring parties that made it into power. Or, what about the unforeseen that we cannot predict? Suppose they push the minority presidency into democratizing and innovating.
My deeply held belief is that if the AFC had stayed out and performed as the balancer after 2015, people would have pushed the AFC into demanding transformational changes from the minority presidency to Guyana’s political culture. In other words, never mind those in the AFC leadership weren’t visionary, they would have ended up in that direction because of the different class pressures on them as the balancer.
I can see my friends saying, “Freddie, but they are a bunch of middle class people who if they become the balancer, will demand policies in favour of the middle class; isn’t this the same AFC in new clothes?”
My answer is that historically the middle class has played crucial roles in removing colonial and post-colonial states that were undemocratic, and huge scopes for democratization came about. But more importantly show me the working class interest represented in government since Forbes Burnham died in 1985 right up to 2017.

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The anti-parking meter protest: History that went unnoticed

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