Has any other political entity destroyed itself and its ethnic constituency like the PNC?

Jul 11, 2020 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,

Ethno-politics is simple. You advance your kith and kin ahead of others. Very simple. But not so simple with the PNC. In the 54 years of rabid Guyanese race politics since Independence, the PNC or a PNC-dominated entity has held power for 31 years. Yet the PNC’s ethnic constituency, African-Guyanese, has suffered the worst economic degradation in those 54 years compared to any other ethnic constituency. This current election criminality, immorality, arrogance and banality driven by the PNC sheds a lot of light on why the PNC has consistently smashed its knee on the neck of its ethnic constituency in those past 54 years. The PPP has its own history of self-destruction but the PNC is in another extraordinary league of its own. It has wrecked itself and its ethnic base at every critical juncture. The strategic and intellectual wasteland that is Congress Place is staggering.
When the PNC gained power in 1964 backed by the West, capitalist Guyana had the 50th highest GDP per capita in the world. Yes, 50th highest! What happened between 1964 and 1992 was eminently outrageous. Despite the backing of the capitalist West, an incredible foundation for capitalist economic takeoff and proven success from Singapore and others from playing the ideological game to obtain massive Western capital infusions to gain economic glory, the PNC alarmingly went socialist in a country where it lacked majority support (essential for socialist success) and where the majority of the country was naturally capitalistic in nature.
The result was the slaughter of African entrepreneurship and capitalist fervor. The PNC killed it so a few idiots controlling the PNC could use Africans under the cover of a socialist system to remain in power. The PNC pulled and pushed Africans from productive entrepreneurial activity into a state-dominated socialist economy that soon collapsed wiping out over a hundred years of African generational wealth and entrepreneurial spirit in just over a decade. It took one decade for a hundred years of African struggle for economic emancipation to be erased by the PNC!
Those left out of that state jobs largesse for PNC party card holders went the entrepreneurial and emigration route. They built wealth and capital and in doing so better handled the detonation and implosion of the public sector and the collapse of the economy. They were economically way ahead of the PNC’s ethnic constituency when the dust settled.
To add to the economic ruin of its ethnic constituency, the PNC accelerated free market reforms in 1988 without any buffer to protect its vulnerable constituency from the frothing feeding frenzy that ensued. Imagine these were people who held absolute power to pass any law they wanted and they did nothing! The resulting bloodbath for the PNC’s already economically annihilated constituency was staggering. Add the ethnocentric policies of the PPP mirroring the PNC’s ethnocratic sickness and Africans fell further into a hole.
Then the PNC went to “slo-fyah mo-fyah” after the 1997 election. After running around Georgetown for months, they shamefully signed an accord that focused solely on trying to gain political power rather than focus on economic equalization for their constituency. The political power never materialized and the social and economic wreckage of the PNC’s ethnic constituency continued. Then the PNC landed back in power in 2015 and again, true to form, it did what its DNA dictated; nothing for economic equalization and African economic empowerment. And again, the trap was set and sprung against itself and its base.
Now, here we are with the PNC trying to bare facedly steal an election that it would have won if it had called an election right after the no-confidence vote with Jagdeo’s political pawn, Alli, hugely disliked by PPP supporters. Instead, we got a tragic APNU resort to criminality, despotism, bullyism, stupidity and political bestiality that turned a win into a shattering loss. David Granger and the PNC sat on a constitutional reform report for almost 4 years that would have saved the PNC and its base now. But here we are with the PNC trying to choke and rob Guyana of what it could have achieved by legitimate, decent and sensible means.
This is the shameful legacy of the PNC to its ethnic African constituency. It is one of terrifyingly lame-brained decision-making, abuse of its constituency and a dangerous orientation to dishonesty and authoritarianism that impedes any sense of clarity and tactical awareness. And the PNC is now a political movement run by trained military minds whom Guyanese taxpayers have spent billions to train in tactical awareness all over the world! If the self-induced gunshot wound from the no-confidence vote fallout wasn’t enough, the electoral filthiness has now irrevocably banished the PNC to Hades. It has slaughtered any chance of power sharing. It has exacerbated race politics when it has the minority position. It has damaged the social currency Africans had. It has unveiled the true nasty nature of race politics. It has ramped up ethnic fear and agitation with its antics. It has exterminated any realistic chance of winning crossover voter support. It has ticked off the international community. It has put a shotgun to our sovereignty just when we are fighting for it at the ICJ. If the PNC continues this charade, it will invite lethal force upon itself.
The PNC will now have Africans marauding in the streets of Georgetown under an abjectly false narrative of being cheated. It will not move on. It cannot move on. It has never moved on. It is trapped in the miasmic sadness of the worst excesses of failed ethno-politics. The PPP grumbled after losing the last election by 0.3 percent but it moved on, rebuilt support and won the next election. Its constituency moved on, adjusting and adapting and seizing on economic opportunities under APNU rule to further deepen the economic divide the PNC started by spectacularly destroying African economic power. The PNC is still trying more than a year after a no-confidence vote to bludgeon Guyana into submission to its nasty wrongdoing. In that year, it did nothing to equalize the economic playfield in order to protect its constituency. It did not implement its own constitutional reform report. It has done absolutely nothing! It is a sad tale of thieving laziness on display here with this electoral mess. And here it is trying to commit kick-down-door electoral banditry when it has left its own constituency door-less and rammed its knee on their collective neck.

Yours faithfully,
M. Maxwell

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