The PPP hypocrisy is diseased and evil

Jul 08, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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The hypocrisy of the leaders of the PPP can play with the mind of decent humans. If you want to be free of the instinct of hate, then your chances are not good once the former rulers of Guyana are still around, that is, the PPP’s leadership. You have to endure their incredible depravity, and as this depravity continues to saturate Guyana, you are revolted, disgusted and you can easily slip into hate mode.
The PPP can really make you hate them. Last week, the PPP sponsored a seminar on capitalism at the National Library. The theme was how the economics of Marxism, so finely adumbrated by Marx’s seminal work “Das Kapital,” can help the people of Guyana. If you are interested in reading “Das Kapital” you need to know upfront it is a formidable challenge, and if you surmount it and comprehend it, then you also need to know that the themes of “Das Kapital” cannot fit neatly into the post-modern, 21st century world.
Capitalism is inherently flawed, but it has survived for reasons Marx could not have foreseen in the early 19th century. If capitalism is going to fall, it will do so not based on Marx’s critiques of it. Capitalism’s essential nemesis in 21st century society will be in the realm of psychology and not economics.
It can make you want to throw up, to think that the PPP has an interest in Marxian economics. Beginning with President Cheddi Jagan, PPP’s rule from 1992 had no socialist features about it. Jagan’s early actions involved selling two state-owned banks to the capitalist class, in which the state hardly got anything in return. It was under President Jagan, that UG lecturers had their duty free concessions cancelled.
At that time, 1994, about eighty percent of those lecturers were drawn from the working class and lower middle class. One of the painful truths of this country is that no Guyanese Indian who lived during the time of the overwhelming presence of Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham would be willing to admit that Forbes Burnham was more of a genuine socialist than Jagan. From Independence to now, the leader more concerned with implementing policies to benefit the working classes was Forbes Burnham.
After President Janet Jagan handed power to Bharrat Jagdeo, I used the term fascistization to describe the evolution of the state under President Jagdeo. Guyanese icon Clive Thomas described Guyana under Jagdeo as a criminalized state. Jagdeo’s Guyana was characterized by the hegemony of a rich cabal that milked this country while the rural peasantry and urban proletariat suffered immensely.
The information to describe the depraved capitalist system under Jagdeo and Ramotar is so voluminous that it would take a book-length manuscript, rather than a few newspaper columns, to fully expose it. Mr. Jagdeo and Mr. Ramotar ran a debauched, naked capitalist system that benefitted a few super-rich people. It came as no surprise to the analyst when he/she picked the newspaper and learnt that some of the country’s richest citizens were the personal friends of President Jagdeo.
At one Cabinet session, a concession for one of the country’s richest men was on the agenda. The president excused himself saying that since the man was his friend, he could not preside over the decision. This is the same party that held a seminar last week about socialist economics. The brutal reality of Caribbean economics is that Guyana, molded in socialist traditions, ironically became the most capitalist-oriented economy under Jagdeo, even more than Barbados. Throughout the reign of Jagdeo and Ramotar, university education remained free in Barbados.
It was under the PPP Government that Guyanese had to pay water rates and free university education was abolished. The party that chauffeured the government in such directions and that pursued cruel anti-working class programmes has a constitution that boldly states that it is guided by Marxism-Leninism. When the PPP ruled Guyana under Jagdeo and Ramotar, if working class economics had appeared in front their eyes as the voracious, flesh-eating Jaws, these two men would not have recognized it.
We end with a curious and exciting question, the answer to which is quite banal. Why would a party so openly capitalist when in government, now want to educate the public on Marxist economics? Yes, the answer is banal. All they are doing is politicking to stay alive in the eyes of their rural supporters. Obviously they cannot preach Jagdeoite, neo-liberal economics to the poor country folks. So why not tell them about the ideology of Papa Cheddi and Cheddi’s embrace of Marxist economics. Make sense, doesn’t it?

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