Guyana: A study in twisted psychology

Feb 20, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – There has been a steady flow of resignations from the apex of the Alliance For Change (AFC). Each statement that accompanies the resignation describes how disappointed the resigned person felt about how emaciated politically the AFC has become.
The most high profile executives to have parted company with the party – Dominic Gaskin and Leonard Craig – have been there from the beginning. Former parliamentarian, Trevor Williams, told me he has moved on. This week, Reynard Ward, an AFC parliamentarian before the elections, took his exit. There are scores of popular AFC second tier leaders who have ridden away. Their departure didn’t make the news.
All of these persons make a fascinating study in psychology except Gaskin. He didn’t leave because of the depraved politics of the AFC between 2015 and 2020. His alienation stemmed from his conscience not allowing him to accept that his party should rig the national elections. Prior to the March 2020 election, Gaskin was part of a tightly knitted group that closely controlled everything in the AFC.
Between May 2015 and February 2020, Gaskin was part of the AFC leadership that wielded state power without giving any recognition to the reality that the AFC in power had jettisoned every principle of life that made the AFC a phenomenal presence.
If you take Gaskin out of the equation, then those who have left make for superb theorizing in the study of the mind. Ward, in his resignation letter offered a description of the AFC that equally applies to him and all of his colleagues who have resigned. Ward said that the AFC is currently in an abusive relationship with the PNC.
Ward and his fellow executives were in an abusive relation with the tiny cabal that controls the AFC since May 2015, when power was secured. Ward and other executives were voluntary prisoners in their own party. The question is why did Ward and his fellow resignees did not break away from their party in May 2015 when all the signs were there that the tiny cabal had gone completely obsessed with power and had become so degenerate that the AFC’s immoral directions were far deeper than anything this country had seen from the PPP and PNC politicians.
There are two theories that explain why the AFC second-tier leaders chose not to stop the fetid rot in the AFC after it got state power in May 2015. One concept is embraced by Craig. The other is my approach. Here is what Craig said to me when I upbraided him for not seeking to discipline an African Guyanese leader who called for ethnic partition during a virtual meeting of the AFC’s hierarchy.
He said I would not understand the party blood in leaders, because I was never in a political party. He explained that party loyalists for the sake of unity and survival just cannot go challenging every decision and confronting every leader. He noted that there are times that the party loyalist has to just accept that his/her inaction is out of love of the party.
I accepted what he told me and I think that his adumbration is the reality in political outfits anywhere in the world. Then I offered my theory. In agreeing with Craig I said that there are circumstances that will be born in which loyalists have to put country, sacred principles and civilized values before love of party.
Space will soon run out but here are a few examples. Only Dr. Vincent Adams in the AFC ejected the partition talk of that AFC leader. That leader’s resignation should have been demanded. All second-tier leaders of the AFC should have resigned when that tiny cabal in May 2015 called someone who was politically inferior to them and offered that someone the post of minister of the environment.
It is interesting to note that one of the executives that negotiated the Cummingsburg Accord in February 2015 was Rajendra Bissesar. Yet after May 2015, Bissesar told me he was denied a junior minister post and any CEO position in the state sector. Where were all these executives who have now resigned? Where were their eyes? Where were their loyalty to country and principles? All of a sudden they have discovered that the AFC is an unprincipled entity.
The final example is from the WPA. A senior person in the WPA told me over brunch at the Tastee Snack restaurant on David Street in Kitty in 2016, that when Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine announced to the WPA that, as a minister of government, he cannot discuss government business within the party, the WPA should have expelled him. But he never brought it up in the WPA. Maybe most humans enjoy being silent or abused or sycophantic.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)