Mike McCormack vs. the Alphonso Empire: I’m on Mike’s side

Jan 05, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I was born in an era where the prevailing zeitgeist was to philosophically question everything handed down to my generation. It was a period referred to as the counterculture. That age became to be associated with the hippies, ubiquitous student uprisings, the visage of Che Guevara, the radicalism of French philosophy, the assertion that Black is Beautiful, the struggle for Independence by Third World countries and the rejection of capitalism.
By the time the world reached the mid-eighties, the hippies vanished to be replaced by the yuppies. The latter was the face of capitalism. In the eighties, socialist economics, socialist politics, socialist revolution were dead and buried. Capitalism ruled the world. Today, the best term to describe the global system is runaway capitalism or relentless neo-liberalism.
But today’s zeitgeist of unbridled capitalism is being questioned in the heartland of runaway capitalism – the United States. Some of the names poised to defeat President Trump from the Democratic Party are all avowed leftist liberals whose intentions are to regulate American runaway capitalism. Unfortunately, one of the most decent efforts to regulate cruel neo-liberalism failed in the UK, when Jeremy Corbyn was defeated in the recent elections.
There are two opposing spectrums whose inherent flaws are highly visible for those who choose not to hide their heads in the sand. There is Cuba whose so-called socialist society has exposed all the flaws inherent in such a system. And the morbid inequalities of American runaway capitalism that are so frightening that they threaten the very fabric of America.
Since the end of the Second World War, efforts have been made by government and scholars to find an efficacious pathway between the stagnation of socialism and the cruelties of capitalism. India after Independence, under Nehru, experimented with such a pathway, but to date only the Scandinavian states seem to enjoy some success in that area. Germany is a place to watch in this regard.
There is nothing wrong with a super-wealthy entrepreneur who owns mansions, private yachts and jets. But the philosophical objective of society is to share its wealth. While the billionaire must be allowed to accumulate wealth, the state needs to do the same and distribute it to allow comfortable living for the lower income earners. This is where the American dream faulted and is now dead.
Guyana became caught in the vortex of unruly capitalism of the eighties when President Hoyte submitted to a neo-liberal agenda of the IMF. The cruelties of such a system were more pronounced under President Jagdeo, and have continued under President Granger.
Mike McCormack of the Guyana Human Rights Commission (GHRA) has a letter published in all the dailies last Friday, in which he confronts capitalist oligarchy in Guyana through a rejection of the rhetoric of one of the Caribbean’s wealthiest families – the Alfro Alphonso Empire.
I have had my criticism of McCormack because of the dormancy of the GHRA, but his letter is excellent, courageous and inspiring. It reminds me of the McCormack I knew and associated with in the age of Walter Rodney in the seventies.
The newspapers carried the same title – “The GGDMA’s power-drunk election strategy” in which McCormack replies to the son of Alfro Alphonso, Andron, who advocates that gold miners have the power in their hands to determine the outcome of the March 2020 general elections.
If there wasn’t this reply by McCormack, you would think that Andron Alphonso is a small miner advocating for the rights of such a stratum. On the contrary, the Alphonso Empire is stupendously wealthy and holds extensive mining rights. McCormack describes the pittance ordinary Guyanese have received from an industry that earned $1.5 trillion (not billion but trillion) between 1980 and 2019.
Let’s quote a part of his letter that all Guyanese need to reflect on: “The policies the GGDMA are committed to protecting are neither capitalist nor socialist economics, but more akin to looting. On the one hand, there is a constant clamour for subsidies and privileges from the government to insulate this privileged group from the real costs of extraction, and on the other, they denounce reasonable regulation of the industry that protects the assets of those same citizens, all the while engaging in widespread tax avoidance.”
McCormack let us know that the younger Alphonso has “maintained silence over the fact that the environmental ‘desolation’ generated by his industry puts him at odds with the majority of the generation he hopes to recruit.”
An election is around the corner. I would urge the hundreds of thousands of young Guyanese to read McCormack’s letter and to act on it. Your rejection of incredible domination by the wealthy class in Guyana can save it.

(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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