Campaign season is on and so is civilization’s fault line

Jan 06, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Do you know as recent as Friday and Saturday, I was accosted by ordinary folks, ordinary working class people showing vexation about my politics. I guess both related to my Friday column in which I condemned the horrible violations meted out to me by the combined hegemony of Presidents Jagdeo and Ramotar.
The Saturday drama was in the National Park. A middle age Indian man with dirty clothes on a bicycle that looked a thousand year old, rode past me shouting, “vote PPP, vote PPP.”
The Saturday incident occurred in one of Georgetown’s most popular supermarkets.  For obvious reason, the name cannot be mentioned. Here was a person earning about $40,000 monthly but she had the temerity to tell me, “I see yuh write something today bout de PPP. Wuh you do duh fuh?”
In my entire life as an activist, I have had countless insults hurled at me. Here now is what you will find hard to believe – all, without exception, and I repeat, all have been perpetrated by poor, semi poor, ordinary, working people.
I have never had the experience of someone shouting at me from the educated class, the white collar class, the well placed strata, and people yelling at me from private vehicles. In all my experiences, all the shouts came from drivers in hire-cars. If you choose not to believe this description, I would like to repeat – it is true. That has been my experiences.
Why is that so? Space would not allow for an extensive discussion of sociological and psychological theories but there are some general concepts that are popular that explore the reason for the obvious class structure in such behavioural traits. First, education tends to civilize people and it comes in two forms. People learn about life, nature, science, the world etc and they cherish that knowledge gained and it compels them to change to be better humans.
The other form is that through institutional presence, the educated person meets lovely, learned and humane people who sit right next to them in class and these people have an elevating effect on others.
Secondly, with education comes status, with status comes recognition; with recognition comes different, deeper and higher forms of socialization. People then tend to live their lives to protect those higher values they have acquired through education and socialization.
Here are two powerful examples. A flight attendant isn’t going to push his/her head through the car door and yell out to a columnist or activist, “Yuh are an effing liar.”
Two factors will deter such an outburst. One is commonsensical – self-awareness that flight attendants to not behave like that and the fear of shock and disappointment if your bosses and peers hear how you behave in public.
The second example is similar. A doctor isn’t going to be driving by and shout out to a political figure, “Who will vote for you, get out the effing way”?
I write these notes against the background of the election season that is upon us.  As night follows day, the ordinary man and woman from the low income classes are going to abuse politicians from all parties in all parts of Guyana. Journalists will come in for their share.
In PPP strongholds, disparaging words will greet the Chronicle reporters. In PNC strongholds, channel 65 and Guyana Times reporters will receive insulting adjectives.
At the time of writing, the PPP has made complaints to the police that their campaigners were attacked. One news outlet has a photograph of some folks in APNU colours in Laing Avenue surrounding PPP campaigners in a canter-truck. Judging from the folks that encroached on the vehicle, they look like citizens from the area.
No doubt in PPP strongholds, the PNC flyer-distributors will have to be careful. In all circumstances in the PNC and PPP constituencies, the abusers, attackers and cuss-down men and women will not be from the middle classes and the educated strata.
It is interesting to note that when the PPP was in government, many of their supporters were the recipients of scholarships, good-paying jobs and employment promotion.
It is the same with APNU+AFC. But you can bet all your life-savings that come tomorrow, when the bandwagons of the PPP and PNC roll on, the crude behaviour that will greet the campaigners will not come from those beneficiaries. Those beneficiaries are doctors, lawyers, engineers, business folks living in suburban areas, driving lovely cars with lovely families.
It is a very tragic irony that it is not these people that will not be seen at the street meetings hurling abuse but those who didn’t get anything and will get nothing. What a fault line of civilization.

(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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