The PPP and African Guyanese: You don’t destroy the psyche of a community, and then beg for votes as if nothing happened

May 06, 2018 Features / Columnists, Hinds' Sight with Dr. David Hinds

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I ended last week’s column with quotes from three PPP leaders on their interpretation of my politics. Their central thrust was two-fold. First, they contended that I was only concerned with the interests of African Guyanese—the inference is that I am racist or something near to it and that by extension, I am anti-Indian Guyanese. Second, they concluded that despite my criticisms of the current government, I am not pro-PPP; that I cast the government in better light that of the PPP.
I have repeatedly responded to the former charge over the years, so I will not deal with that in this column. Instead I want to focus on the second charge. I had concluded long before the 2015 election that the PPP had lost its way and was taking Guyana to a place that surpassed where the PNC left Guyana in 1992.
I, therefore, put my activism at the service of the causes that worked to bring an end to that government. I am glad I did. Although the current government is flawed in many ways, I do not regret helping to undermine the PPP government. I was part of the struggle that ousted the PNC
In many ways, the PPP government got a freer ride than its predecessor. Whereas the PNC, given its minority ethnic base, had to resort to naked electoral malpractice to remain in power, the PPP, because of the Indian Guyanese majority, could maintain the façade of a democratically elected government. What that meant was that the opposition was not presented with an automatic clarion call. The government hid behind the mask of democracy while it ruthlessly destroyed every democratic institution and dominated the society in ways reminiscent of the colonials.
That domination had the face of the PPP’s ideology of “manifest destiny”—the belief that the PPP has a God-given right to govern Guyana; that all other parties are subservient to the master-party, the vanguard.
Vanguardism has long been at the core of the PPP’s ideological outlook. That is why party leaders found communism attractive. They paid lip service to its egalitarianism, but they were deeply in love with the narrow definition of democracy inherent in aspects in communism – in other words they loved the “dictatorship” more than the “proletariat” in the slogan, “dictatorship of the proletariat.” That they abandoned any pretense at being a socialist government when they returned to power in 1992 was inevitable. Socialist rhetoric was a means to an end – domination.
Going along with the ideology of party-domination was the PPP’s fidelity to the ideology of ethnic domination. Again, communism was the mask that was used to hide the PPP’s acceptance of ethno-racial praxis as integral to its reason for being from 1956 to the present.
The severance from the PPP in 1956 of the so-called Ultra Left, who were mostly Black and Brown comrades, and their replacement in the party’s leadership by “Indian patriots,” mostly from the ranks of the Indian Guyanese elite, transformed the once multi-racial party into an unmistakably Indian party. Since then, the PPP, despite its multiracial rhetoric, has remained the natural political home for most Indian Guyanese. And the party jealously guards that image and role.
The PPP attributed its removal from office in 1964 to a combination of external intervention and African Guyanese bullyism. So, when it returned to power in 1992, it was logical that it would do anything to ensure history did not repeat itself. Towards this end, it moved swiftly to weaken the African Guyanese community through a combination of force and co-option. What followed was a systemic use of policy and naked state force to bring that community to its knees.
As soon as it took office, the PPP purged the Foreign Service of most of its Black workers. It then moved to dismantle Mashramani, which had developed into an African Guyanese dominated festival. When Dr. Jagan died in 1997, the PPP, in a vulgar display of ethnic domination, ensured that Sam Hinds did not become his long-term successor. It imposed Mrs. Jagan on the country and then put in place a formula to ensure that an Indian Guyanese succeeded her.
It then declared war on the mainly African Guyanese Public Service, leading to the 1999 strike. Up till it left office, the PPP government never fully honoured the recommendations of the Arbitration team it set up. The government never put the necessary investment into bauxite as it did for sugar. Instead it sought to remove the electricity subsidy from the bauxite community and when the community protested, it ordered the police to gun down the protestors, leading to the death of three citizens.
When African Guyanese organizations asked for the 1823 monument to be erected at Parade Ground, the PPP ignored them and erected the monument at a location of their choice. All this time the regime subsidized a constant diet of partying in the Black community—exploiting that community’s penchant for celebration to keep it distracted from political engagement. The government targeted selective African Guyanese leaders and showered them with money and other material benefits to serve as enforcers in their communities.
When the February 2002 jailbreak occurred, the PPP retaliated to the Buxton-based violence with a para-military onslaught spearheaded by the dreaded Phantom Squad that summarily slaughtered hundreds of black youth. It simultaneously used the state forces to terrorize the Buxtonion community under the guise of eradicating the violence that had taken root there.
During the PPP’s rule, it never implemented one policy that was aimed at uplifting African Guyanese—not one! By the time it was finished with that community, it had lost all confidence in itself—it did not even believe that the PPP could be dislodged from power and that an African Guyanese could become the country’s leader.
One of the dirty secrets of the African Guyanese community is that many of them who are today jumping behind Granger were prepared to support Nagamootoo as the Coalition’s presidential candidate because they felt that an African Guyanese could never become leader of Guyana. I well remember that this writer was the only African Guyanese public person that had the courage to say publicly that to ask African Guyanese to choose between two Indian Guyanese candidates was unacceptable.
It is the above behaviour of the PPP that I feel compelled to remind Guyanese, in particular, African Guyanese, about. Mr. Jagdeo recently has been talking about wooing African Guyanese to the PPP for 2020. I am giving the PPP an early warning—unless that party acknowledges what it systematically did to African Guyanese during it previous reign and atone for it, it will have to contend with my so-called Black Nationalist voice.
You do not destroy the psyche of a community and then in five years beg for its votes as if nothing happened. It is not that the PPP did not hurt other communities, but the attacks on the African Guyanese community were deliberate and disproportionate.

More of Dr. Hinds ‘writings and commentaries can be found on his YouTube Channel Hinds’ Sight: Dr. David Hinds’ Guyana-Caribbean Politics and on his website www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.news. Send comments to [email protected]

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