Defenders of election rigging: A Marxist and Freudian analysis. Part 2

Mar 06, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – I ended part one yesterday by stating that the mulatto society and the middle class in general did not anticipate a PPP return to power in 2020. Although they had some vexations with the way the APNU+AFC government performed from 2015 to 2020, these strata were overall comfortable with the neo-liberal directions of the government.
They saw in Granger a middle class personality that they would accept any day than a Bharrat Jagdeo or Donald Ramotar or Irfaan Ali. As the election campaign began in December, they could not have envisaged a win for the PPP. Their uneasiness about the PPP first started with the game-changer – the no confidence vote (NCV). In my piece yesterday, I mentioned that throughout the year of the machinations to avoid the effect of the NCV, not even one article was published about the illegalities of the PNC and AFC in the weekly “In the Diaspora” column.
By Thursday afternoon on March 4 when the world knew the PPP had won, the mulatto groupings had become resigned for two reasons. First, the rigging was too blatant, barefaced, comical, and sickening. If it was subtle and sophisticated, they may have had an excuse to accept an APNU+AFC “victory.”
In fact, three women from this stratum published an interview with the Chronicle supporting Claudette Singh. But as Singh’s deportment became more and more unpalatable, their open support for rigging disappeared. This stratum chose to remain silent.
A second reason for the reticence was fear of loss of credibility. Highly respected international figures from all over the world were condemning the rigging. The list of eminent personalities included past and present CARICOM prime ministers and the current Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies. Because of space constraints, we have to move on to the other compartment mentioned in part one that had their Freudian reasons for staying silent.
This topic is an involved one and a third of a column will not do justice to the analysis. So the remaining section of this article will just be brief notes.
Why did people like Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine, Dr. Clive Thomas, Dr. Nigel Westmass, Dr. Arif Bulkan, Moses Bhagwan, Eusi Kwayana and others chose not to denounce one of the world’s most tragic attempt to rape democracy in Guyana in an age where that was almost impossible in these parts of the world?
All the names featured above saw the 2020 election contest as a war involving a party that they feared coming back to power. It doesn’t mean that they like the APNU+AFC. They didn’t want the PPP’s return. Here is where Freud comes in. In their mind lies a deep non-approval of the PPP. People like Moses Bhagwan and Eusi Kwayana have never forgiven the PPP for reducing their role in Guyanese politics. Those men will never forgive Cheddi Jagan. For them, Jagan is the PPP and the PPP is Jagan.
They both gravitated to the WPA in the 70s because they saw the WPA as replacing the PPP thereby gaining their revenge on Jagan. It will need at least two columns to analyze Rupert Roopnaraine. He is perhaps an atavistic return to the era of the middle class, light complexioned Indians in the 40s who preferred to socialize with the European society in British Guiana.
People like Roopnaraine, the Ramsahoyes, the Luckhoos, Peter D’Aguiar’s Indian colleagues, chose to attach themselves to Creole/Portuguese/colonial society. They evolved from Guyanese Creole culture and were socialized into Creole, West Indian culture. These Indians are not obnoxious people; in fact are pleasant humans. It is just at the cultural level, they prefer European values. Do you know one of the most prominent, living Guyanese personalities dropped his Indian last name and adopted a western, Christian last name? Ironically, White American, Janet Jagan, embraced Indian culture. The attitude of these people to the 2020 rigging is the same as their colleagues in the mulatto ethnic community.
Finally, the WPA people like Clive Thomas, Joycelyn Dow, Bonita Bone, Dr. Nigel Westmass, Dr. David Hinds and other WPA remnants. The problems between these people and the PPP run long and deep. The choice for them is APNU+AFC not the PPP. Their historical approach to contemporary dialectics in Guyana is that the WPA should have been the rightful heir of the vacuum that existed after Forbes Burnham’s totalitarian tyranny was extirpated. They felt deeply hurt and they have become unforgiving at what the PPP did to them after 1992. That was no reason for wanting Guyana to return to dictatorship through rigged election in 2020. You had to put country first. They did not.

(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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