The PNC and WPA: Class and Race Betrayal

Mar 24, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – The analysis to follow excludes the Alliance For Change (AFC). I will refer to the AFC in the past tense because I believe it is dead. It cannot resuscitate itself because its raison d’être has long gone. The AFC started out as a middle class party in the genre of the National Democratic Party of Sir John Carter of the 1950s, which catered exclusively for the elite, light-complexioned Creole society.
Ironically, the United Force of the 1960s formed by Portuguese businessmen to protect business and commerce had an interesting dualism about it. It also was active among the least economically prosperous ethnic community in Guyana – the Indigenous folks. Also the United Force did not neglect the ordinary Portuguese workers.
The AFC did not commit class and race betrayal. It never professed to be a working class organisation and openly abstained from using terms such as the “labouring masses,” the “working people.” Unlike the PPP, PNC and WPA, it found the mention of the word, “socialist” disdainful and none of its founding leaders ever mentioned it since the AFC was born in late 2005. In relation to reality of racial divisions, its shape never catered to serve any particular ethnic constituency.
In the consciousness of African Guyanese society, the PNC is an African party whose role is to represent Afro-Guyanese. The PNC is also a class-based party. It has never been an openly pro-business or an openly pro-middle class entity. Like the PPP, its leaders always come from the bottom without being born into privilege. The WPA, as its name bears, seeks to advance causes of the working people.
The new PNC, after its Corbin era was over, came to power in 2015. The WPA since its formation in 1976 never entered the halls of government. It did in 2015. In power for five years, the PNC showed no concern for the plight of African Guyanese working people. The WPA in power simply existed in name only and advanced not one policy formulation to create space in the political economy for the urban proletarian and poor rural peasantry. In fact, one of the WPA’s leaders, Clive Thomas was chairman of GuySuCo when that State body literally devastated the lives of the rural proletariat putting 28,000 families in the sugar industry to live an uncertain existence.
Since their ignominious fall from power in the election, they both tried to steal (David Hinds and Desmond Trotman of the WPA were vicious during the five-month election drama), the PNC has been appealing to the instincts of people who they have betrayed – African Guyanese. The WPA keeps lamenting the mistreatment of the poorer folks though they did nothing to help them when in office. Let’s look at a few examples.
The WPA issued a statement two weeks ago deploring the abuse small depositors have to endure at commercial banks. The banks are demanding self-employed folks pay a chartered accountant to do their submissions. The WPA is a sickening bunch of dishonest minds. The cruelty of the commercial banks was going on when the WPA was in power for five years. Its statement meant it did nothing about the banks when it was in government.
Clive Thomas went to Buxton and scored some cheap, vulgar publicity. He urged that US$5000 be given to low income families from oil revenue but that effort existed without a working class agenda being tabled to Cabinet as part of government’s policy.
The same Thomas was head of SARA, paying millions monthly in rent to one of the Caribbean richest families who were not African. His deputy, Aubrey Retemyer, told me on the seawall one afternoon that he was uncomfortable with that decision of Thomas and suggested I speak to Thomas about it. I was too contemptuous of Thomas to speak to him.
The PNC after 2015 never raised the retirement age for civil servants, the police force and the army, 90 percent of whom are Afro-Guyanese. The PNC after 2015 did not offer a substantial pay rise to teachers and nurses, of which more than 75 percent are Afro-Guyanese. The PNC after 2015 increased the subvention to UG most of which went to paying salaries of a small elite group with the Vice Chancellor’s salary being doubled to almost two million dollars monthly. Almost 70 percent of UG staff is Afro-Guyanese.
Absolutely nothing was done for Georgetown street vendors of which 99 percent are Afro-Guyanese. The point is made – when in power, the PNC let down the African Guyanese proletariat. When in power, the WPA was the Worst Possible Alternative (WPA) in Guyana’s future.

(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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