Guyanese cannot be so insanely hypocritical

Aug 30, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Long before the APNU+AFC regime reached three years, it embarked on unpopular policies that had echoes of the PPP’s imprint. Just a mere year after it came into power, the government had done identical wrongdoing that characterized the rule of the PPP. In the days of PPP domination, countless voices were heard denouncing those unpalatable things the PPP did. The nation always reminded the PPP government about its depravities.
The dissenting voices during the reign of the PPP have either migrated to the cemetery or have suffered from carcinogenic laryngitis. Take the WPA. It leads the chorus of protection of neo-liberal economics, a cruel ideology that Clive Thomas wrote countless manuscripts denouncing from the seventies onwards.
The WPA warned Minister Jaipaul Sharma that he must be careful what he says doesn’t play into the hands of the PPP. In a long letter in the newspaper, the WPA put it this way; “Minister Jaipaul Sharma joins PPP leader, Bharrat Jagdeo, in labeling the cash-transfer proposal a gimmick aimed at getting votes. We wonder which party he thinks will benefit from this so-called gimmick.”
It doesn’t need any explanation whatsoever. You help the PPP’s cause if and when you criticize the APNU+AFC government. This attitude comes a mere three years after this country showed relentless vexations with the unacceptable policies and cruel decisions of the PPP. From 2015, when it got power, the APNU+AFC leadership decided with graphic clarity that they will not be pleased with people telling them that they are doing wrong things.
Such a state of mind is best exemplified by what Minister Khemraj Ramjattan said on television. Just one year after the APNU+AFC coalition came into power, Ramjattan was interviewed by Christopher Ram. When Ram pointed to castigations by me and David Hinds of the overbearing mistakes of the government, Ramjattan declared that perhaps Hinds and I want to bring back the PPP in power. This was an exclamation by a minister whom I fought alongside and knew the oppression I went through under the PPP regime, including victimization of my wife.
But why point to the intolerance of the leaders of APNU+AFC. Their supporters who had unlimited energy are now silent. Just think of what would have happened if Jagdeo or Ramotar was in power and a huge delegation from the US House of Representatives accompanied by military personnel had arrived in Guyana on a visit that was shrouded in secrecy. The delegation came, spent one day, did not meet the press and the official opposition.
Let your imagination roam. The leadership of every opposition party, civil society groups, social media fanatics and the energetic detractors of the PPP government would have come up with eerie, weird, and surreal speculations that words could not have scientifically described. Some of the semantic atrocities would have included – (1) they come to warn the government not to argue with Exxon; (2) they are here to discuss the upcoming elections; (3) it is to set up a military base to deal with Venezuela.
So where are the pens and voices during the days of PPP’s misrule? If teachers went on strike during the hegemony of the PPP, many of us from non-teaching professions would have been seen in the picket line. This columnist is going to join the picket for one fundamental reason only – it is the decent thing to do. I did it when the PPP was in power. The use of power is still one-sided in 2018, and I have an obligation to show moral support for our teachers.
We boycotted the 1823 monument on the seawall road during the rule of the PPP. Now the PNC is in power, Granger goes to the site yearly to give his talk, and dozens and dozens sit at that very site to listen to him, a site that they ridiculed when the PPP was in power. The logic is weird and unacceptable, but it is understandable, and it goes something like this: We rejected the site at that time because the people in power were not our leaders. Our leaders are now in power, so we should accept the site.
I remember at one public meeting, Walter Rodney once wondered how the then leaders did not choke on their words when they fooled the masses. I am wondering myself if those who rejected the 1823 monument being put on the seawall road do not fear that the seats would collapse as they sit on them. So I guess we live in a Guyana today where it was good guys versus bad guys when Jagdeo and Ramotar ruled. All of a sudden Guyana has only good guys now.

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