Political miasma that continues to harm Guyana’s future

Oct 30, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

A special mental corner in me was buoyed when APNU was born.
I was in deep optimistic waves with the continuing electoral success of the AFC.
Then the AFC and APNU came to power and I am left with the thought of one of the best Marxist minds of the 20th century, the Italian thinker, Antonio Gramsci.
He said that the optimism of the will must override the pessimism of the intellect.
There are countless backwardness and manifestations of miasmic politics from the AFC and APNU that keep the candle of pessimism burning inside of me.
Two recent episodes are just another mile the train of disaster has covered in this tragic country. Friends of mine, people I trust, people that I share political sentiments with, told me that APNU+AFC counter-demonstrators attacked sugar-workers that were picketing Parliament last week when the President was addressing the House.
I was told that placards were pulled away and sugar workers were shoved.
This is what I thought we had left behind with the birth of APNU and the electoral journey of the AFC. These formations are now in power and we see no values from them that indicate we are on a journey to a new political culture; on the contrary, the deportment, mentality and mindset of our new dispensation are no different from the Freedom House monsters that ruled us for 15 years.
I was outside the head office of the AFC one evening last week with my dog when AFC parliamentarian Michael Carrington came out and played with my dog.
I saw Charles Ramson Junior and his group putting up PPP flags on the posts on Railway Street where the AFC head office is. He came up, shook my hand and Carrington’s. I saw with my own two eyes as I was driving west on Railway Street the next morning on my way to the National Park, a fellow taking down all the PPP’s flags.
The PPP would have done the same, but one thought that the AFC and APNU would usher pieces of a new culture that would eventually merge into a promising cartography. This was not to be.
A friend told me some APNU+AFC counter-protestors crossed their line and went straight into the faces of the PPP’s supporters.
They unleashed a torrent of abuse of those who were holding placards highlighting the mistreatment of sugar workers. Some PPP picketers were actually manhandled.
People have a right to picket. This is what our foreparents fought for. This is what we fought to have in the colonial era. This is what we struggled for during the domination of Forbes Burnham, Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar.
Under Ramotar’s presidency in 2012, three peaceful picketers, including a mentally challenged fellow, were shot dead in the demonstration.
I believe PPP leaders did incite their supporters to physically harm anti-government picketers in Berbice during the hegemonic days of Jagdeo and Ramotar, and would do it again, if and when they get back in power.
But those who lived through those horrendous times need to show a superior culture, because people voted for changes in such type of behaviour and believed that APNU and the AFC would bring new attitudes.
The other episode concerns Whim, the Berbice birth village of the Prime Minister. It relates to the upcoming LGE.
There are dimensions to the crisis there that do not augur well for electoral smoothness in the future. The main contention of the PPP is that fifty persons added their signatures to the AFC’s electoral document, but were manipulated in doing so, in that they were not told they were giving their signatures for election purposes.
The AFC said this is the usual PPP nastiness. But some things are not right here.
The PPP asked the courts to remove the fifty names. The court ruled against the PPP, with the judge saying that he found no evidence of fraud. But it still leaves the 60 million dollar question – if the fifty persons want to remain on the list as AFC sympathizers, surely they must have told the PPP this. Why would the PPP go to the court to remove their names when they are legitimate backers of the AFC?
In other words, the PPP tried to get the courts to wrongfully remove fifty names on the AFC electoral papers. But where are these fifty souls?
Why they, themselves are not picketing the PPP’s office shouting down that they want their names to remain on the list?
Alternatively, why isn’t the AFC producing these people for the media and the nation to see? Where are these fifty villagers?

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