Dialectics in Guyana’s politics: An alternative theory

Oct 04, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I rejected several analytical pieces of Guyana’s politics during the five-month election impasse because I think they were flawed; the wrong methodology was used. From 2015, the dynamics of Guyanese politics changed deeply. The traditional methodology has served its purpose and academics must go beyond it.
One cannot go on polemicizing on the rivalry of the historic two leviathans and its internecine consequences for ethnic communities. The dialectics have generated formidable class changes in Guyanese politics since 2015 that have to be factored in one’s theorizing. Four submissions have relied on the old paradigm. Three were written during the five-month election rigging and one on last Friday.
One was a joint effort by Dr. Alissa Trotz and Dr. Arif Bulkan. See my column of Tuesday, July 14, 2020, “In the diaspora, in Plato’s cave.” Another offering was by Professor Omar Shahabudin McDoom, of Guyanese extraction who teaches at the London School of Economics. See my column of Wednesday, July 22, 2020, “Dr. Mc Doom’s pair of red underwear has lost its brightness and shape.”
Then Dr. Trotz repeated her concepts on Guyanese politics this time with Karen de Souza from the organization, Red Thread. See my column of Tuesday, July 28, 2020, “Trotz, De Souza and rigging: The imprisoned Freudian mind.” In Friday’s edition of the Stabroek News, there is an editorial that though does not walk in the identical direction of Dr. Trotz, Bulkan, de Souza and Mc Doom it incorporates analytical outlooks that rely on the same traditional, methodological sources.
Trotz, Bulkan, de Souza and Mc Doom have repeated what Guyanese academia has been saturated with over the past seven decades – that the sociological story of Guyana is PPP hogging power for ethnic hegemony and the PNC doing the same with dire consequences for social stability because they rule on behalf of their own constituencies and not for the entire society. Though this theory has been efficacious over the past seven decades, the dialectics of power-sharing between the PNC, AFC and WPA since 2015, have transformed the fulcrums of the political sociology of Guyana.
To argue that the 2020 election confrontation is the same old story of party/ethnic rivalry between PNC and PPP is to overlook substantial changes in the political landscape of Guyana since 2015. Perhaps confusion is the relevant term when one researches the degeneracy of power and politics since 2015 that involved a traditional working class, ethnically based party, the PNC; a formidable, multi-racial capitalist outfit, the AFC and the radical left wing, multi-racial revolutionary organization, the WPA.
The Stabroek News editorial is about the nature of the PNC. It does not analyze party politics in general and does not touch the question of the anatomical connection between the PNC and racial governance. The editorial simply rehashes the historical condemnations levelled against the PNC because of its undemocratic instincts. But there is a huge but. But it does so in juxtaposition with the junior partner, the AFC, assigning no assessment whatsoever to the role the AFC has played in Guyanese society that we are accustomed seeing from the PPP and PNC – the role of destruction. Here is a perfect example of too much emphasis on the usual perspective.
Some scholars have dismissed the role of the AFC and the WPA since 2015, arguing that the 2015 administration was a continuation of the trend of the past seventy years – PNC versus PPP with the accompanying ethnic competition. They contend that the AFC and WPA were mere window-dressing. That is vulgar theorizing.
The AFC had six senior ministers and one junior in the 2015 dispensation. It controlled the second most powerful public institution – the prime ministerial portfolio. Its ministries took in some of the most important Cabinet portfolios – security, public works, agriculture, natural resources. The WPA took over the ministry with the largest budget – Education. Some of the powerful thinkers in the WPA like Dr. Maurice Odle and Professor Clive Thomas were given huge state jobs where the latitude to effect far-reaching societal changes was real.
Against this actuality of power, it is nonsensical to see the dynamics of power within the traditional rivalry of PNC versus PPP after 2015. One nascent theory I am advancing is that the Over-Developed State that Pakistani political scientist, Hamza Alavi birthed in the 1970s has not been diluted in post-colonial Guyana but in fact has been preserved.
The deepened Over-Developed State therefore prevents democratization and creates power degeneracy even in parties that have avoided the ethnic pitfalls of the PPP and PNC. The Over-Developed State creates power intoxication which cuts across ethnicity and class structure. This explains the atrophied politics of the WPA and AFC after 2015.

(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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