We may have produced the most troubled nationality in the world

Nov 21, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The most dangerous instinct that has killed the development of philosophical reflections among the entire population (you don’t have to go to university to reflect on the serious values that hold civilisation together) of this country, since the split between Jagan and Burnham, is the emotional embrace of “good guy versus bad guy” that has virtually seeped into the psyche of this nation’s people and has permanently lodged inside of it.
This “good guy versus bad guy” I grew up with. As a Guyanese Indian, I heard the most angelic things said about Jagan and the most demonic things said about Burnham. I saw the psychological embrace of this myth ebbing in African Guyanese when I became active with the WPA. African Guyanese of all shades were disapproving of the way, the PNC was administering Guyana and they saw Burnham as the centrepiece of this drama.
Guyanese Indians made me pessimistic over the way they related to the excesses of the Jagdeo/Ramotar presidencies.
An ocean of terrible attitudes was displayed and horrible policies were implemented by these two presidents, and Indians were silent or disinterested. But the Africans in reaction to this tenacity by Indians resurrected inside their minds the “good guy versus bad guy” syndrome.
I couldn’t find an African Guyanese, except a few in the WPA (naturally), that believed that Burnham conspired to assassinate Rodney or had something to do with the death or even knew about it.
They all felt that Burnham was innocent of any implication of Rodney’s murder. Most Indians felt Rodney’s death was a conspiracy of Burnham. This was Guyana for you, where history’s narrative is shaped by the ethnicity of the narrator.
Ethnic determinism was shocking to live through in Guyana during the Jagdeo years. Even though I read philosophy, I still found it bizarre that highly educated Indians, whose powerful education should have dominated their intellectual approach to politics, could have taken the position they took while Jagdeo ruled.
I remember refusing to shake the hand of Professor David Dabydeen at a function at the Pegasus. I remember an Indian Guyanese professor at one of the premier American universities was part of a group that disrupted my presentation at an academic forum sponsored by the Historical and Research Society.
I remember meeting a Guyanese Indian woman who is a recognized academic in the US and she was completely smitten by the politics of Janet Jagan.
The PNC is in power now, and I see large sections of the African Guyanese population are expressing the good guy versus bad guy instinct.
There is an alarming letter by a very prominent African Guyanese addressed to me and Dr. David Hinds published in all the newspapers.
After detailing all the rigged elections that the PPP perpetuated, he referred to the rigged elections of the PNC as “stock propaganda.”
The man’s reasoning was so simple that you didn’t need even a primary school education to understand what he was saying – the PPP rigged elections, the PNC didn’t. It was a most graphic display of “good guy versus bad guy” thinking by someone who should know better. It was disappointing to read that from this well-known gentleman. He went on in that letter to ask me and David to supply him with evidence of PNC rigging elections.
Interestingly in contrast to his position, Lincoln Lewis wrote a piece in the Chronicle that is on an opposite landscape.
He observed that; “The double standards in the society, however, which we must come to grips with and confront, is that such claims (of rigged elections) must not only be attributed to the People’s National Congress (PNC) while the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) is painted as innocent.
There is no need to address the issue of accusations pertaining to rigged elections by the PNC, as a party or government. The smallest child can speak to this claim every day, given that it has become part of the nation’s daily diet for years. What the society is seldom told are similar claims made of the PPP.
Society cannot deny the challenges brought against Forbes Burnham and Desmond Hoyte on the claims of rigged elections, while Jagan did not face a similar fate.
We became a nation even more divided, where one group was held accountable, while another was allowed to escape.”
You don’t need a primary school education to understand what Lewis is saying here –let’s talk about election rigging by both sides. The letter addressed to me and David reminds us that there was only one set of riggers – the PPP. Surely something is deadly wrong with this nation.

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One thought on “We may have produced the most troubled nationality in the world”

Kassem_B November 21, 2017 at 5:27 am

When are you going to grow up and stop butter scotching each each other.
I am referring to you and the other two you constantly referring to in each of your article

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