Clive Thomas: Atavism or pappy show?

Sep 28, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

On Monday afternoon, David Hinds called me to inquire if I would be at the symposium on cash transfer from oil revenue hosted by the WPA at Critchlow Labour College. I told him no. I was not interested in listening to Clive Thomas and Lincoln Lewis, the other panelists with David.
What can Thomas tell me, a Rodneyite and a multi-racial advocate of a type of political economy in Guyana that must be inclusive, democratic and encompass transformative pathways? Transformations that will make poor people feel that the state will invent a political economy for them to benefit from their country’s resources?
I accept there are forms of socialist economics that Guyana must pursue as a matter of economic reality. I believe in a Guyana where law must not be shaped to the disadvantage of the lower income classes, by that I mean the laboring masses, the unemployed and the lower middle class.
Under Jagdeo, Ramotar and Granger politics, economy, and law were/are democratic caricatures.
These are things I learned as a 20-year-old from people like Clive Thomas. Thomas influenced my direction as a youthful Guyanese who grew up in poverty in Wortmanville and wanted to change Guyana and the world. I still do.
I still am willing to fight against any government that does the wrong things that I fought against with Clive Thomas and the WPA in the seventies and eighties
Look at what Rupert Roopnaraine and Clive Thomas have become after they finally became part of the ultimate dream – to have state power. They had done absolutely nothing, (I am using the adverb sincerely and honestly because I believe it is appropriate) to make even a tiny space of Guyana better.
I say with deep belief that Rupert Roopnaraine has become an invisible footnote. I was part of the WPA in the seventies with him. I was not attracted to his activism because he came across to me as a superficial, bohemian activist happily cocooned in a life of class and colour. He still is. Thomas writes a column in the Stabroek News for more than 10 years now. Each commentary before 2015 had a political dimension to it with the intention of exposing the wrongdoings of the presidencies of the PPP. He referred to the state under the PPP as a criminalized state.
This same Thomas since 2015 has not dedicated even a word of condemnation of the wrongs that have taken place under a government he serves. Not a word on how the courts treat poor people. Not a word on changes to the marijuana law. Not a word on the insanity at UG since 2015, the very UG that he served for 40 years. Not a word on the most caricatured oil contract a Third World government can sign with a multi-national corporation.
You want to know how bitter Thomas was against multi-national corporations, just read one of his books he wrote in the seventies when he and the WPA tried to overthrow the only president in Guyana that was prepared to confront the pillage of multi-nationals in Guyana.
I will offer readers in another column, extracts of some of those writings and asked that they juxtapose them with the Thomas of today.
Why not a word on these social depravities in his columns since 2015? Because he has no credibility after what he did to 7000 sugar workers. He was the chairman of Guysuco when those large numbers of workers were retrenched.
My own economic analysis of sugar informed me that its days had passed. But if you plan to close an industry, it is sadistic not to incorporate a framework for alternative existence. History will never forgive Thomas.
I laughed when I read that Thomas went to Buxton and advanced the idea of actual cash transfer from oil revenues. I laughed even louder when he told his listeners on Monday that it is the business class that is opposing the idea but this same class don’t mind receiving tax breaks and subsidies.
Well, this former revolutionary found his radical voice lost over the past four years. So are we going to see new contents in his weekly columns? Are we going to see the trenchant analyses of the oil contracts? Are we going to see and hear Thomas speaking out about the pathetic wrong directions of his government?
The APNU+AFC government has made the decision not to litigate against a very wealthy businessman who has multiple lawsuits against the state for monies owed during the PPP’s reign. It isn’t sure the state will win so it decided to pay him the billions he is claiming. What Thomas thinks about that?

(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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