Sorry, Gerhard, this is not the reality I see in Guyana

Aug 08, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Gerhard Ramsaroop is a dear friend and, like Charandass Persaud, will remain a close friend of mine who I am fond of. I believe Gerhard has a lot to contribute, and whichever government is formed after the imminent general election, there should be an offer. He should come home from Berlin and serve the country that on countless occasions he told me he loves.
I now conclude my polemical discourse with Gerhard, with the definitive declaration that I reject his proclamation that in the absence of constitutional reform, the PNC embodies the greater possibility of reaching out to all strata of the Guyanese class structure.
I have seen not a scintilla of evidence of that the past four years, about the PNC’s inclusiveness. I will offer snippets of proof that the PNC and the PPP are trapped organisms that cannot come out of their inherent ethnic prison. The PPP and the PNC have never grounded across the racial divide. The result of that omission was a one-sided evolution. This is the reality of their respective ontology since the mid-fifties.
Could Hoyte have transformed the PNC and Guyanese sociology simultaneously? I think he wanted to, but he didn’t get the time. His tenure lasted seven years. Jagdeo was brand new without baggage. But because he was handpicked as the solution to a volcanic confrontation among the top leaders in the PPP to succeed President Janet Jagan, he accepted to be a surrogate. By the time he was his own man, the culture of the PPP was so rubbed off on him that he couldn’t nurture a transformative vein in his political anatomy.
The PNC today has nothing in common with the PNC under Burnham, Hoyte and Corbin. I think all three leaders were better thinkers in how they approached different constituencies. Corbin, of course, wasn’t president. Burnham and Hoyte were innovative presidents, and though the results were not phenomenal, they were not banal either. The present PNC has no such personalities in office or the party at the moment.
Space will not allow for a discourse on these three PNC leaders, but I think a PNC government under Corbin would have been more inclusive. Nothing has been written about him, but I think Corbin from 2009 had ideas about the PNC’s directions that could have put the PNC as a far better entity in the eyes of the Guyanese people than it is seen today.
The fulcrum of Gerhard’s thesis is that of the two Leviathans, the PNC is more capable and ready to reach out to diverse dimensions of the Guyanese nation. The PNC, like the PPP when it was in power (forget the AFC), practices exclusion, racial preferences, incestuous politics and corrupt governance.
In his embrace of the potential positives of the PNC, Gerhard uses the words, “the PNC is the party most inclined to reach out to others and give them real power.” This is a formidable endorsement of the PNC. However, from where I stand, I do not see even tiny specks of that power generosity from the PNC.
I will conclude with some, just a few (I stress the word “few” since space would not allow for dozens of examples) situations that paint the opposite to the canvas Gerhard painted. The teachers have been in a constant stand-off with the government, with attempts by the latter to impose an arbitrator on them.
None of the unions at UG has even the remotest contact with the opposition, yet their just struggle to bring democracy to UG was not supported by the government-appointed members of the UG Council.
About 95 percent of the teenagers serving three years for possession of small quantities of marijuana come from traditional PNC constituencies throughout Guyana. An AFC-sponsored legal amendment was not sanctioned by the PNC leadership. There has been no substantial salary increase for state employees since 2015, a majority of whom are traditionally inclined to vote for the PNC.
I find it unforgiving that David Hinds and Lincoln Lewis could have been removed as columnists from the Chronicle – no doubt because of their outspoken views, a political frankness that both men used against the rule of the PPP. One can add to this the fact that the Chronicle is the same ragged mouthpiece it was under the PPP.
From 2015 onwards, WPA stalwarts, Tacuma Ogunseye and David Hinds, have written countless recriminations against the PNC contending that the WPA has been locked out of policy-making. David Hinds has reasserted that statement as recent as a month ago. Surely, Gerhard, they excluded their own coalition partner that helped bring them to power.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)

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