The PPP has turned right

Feb 11, 2022 Peeping Tom

If Martin Carter was the intellectual fountain of the People’s Progressive Party, then my name is Karl Marx. This year will mark the 95th birth anniversary of Martin Carter.
Carter was one of the initial leaders of the PPP and sat within the Executive Committee of the PPP. But he never became a member of the Legislative Council. He was defeated in the election for a seat in New Amsterdam and thus never got the chance to sit in the Council; and his break with the PPP, or rather the PPP’s break with him meant that he never got the chance to become a member of a PPP government.
But he did achieve that when he became a minister of information under the PNC in 1967. That was short lived since as he said “a mouth is always muzzled by the food it eats to live” and his flirtation with the PNC was about finding food to live.
Unlike some others who felt betrayed and who were overcome by bitterness, Martin Carter maintained a healthy regard for Cheddi, and Cheddi for him. And before he passed to the other world, he dedicated a re-publication of his poems to the memory of Cheddi Jagan and the spirit of Guyana’s Independence movement.
Despite being expelled from the PPP, the Carter and the Jagans enjoyed a good relationship. Mrs. Jagan was very fond of the Carter family.
Martin Carter is a good introduction to comparing the quality of the political leadership of his time with what exists today. If for example you compare the PPP’s representatives in the Council of 1953 with the much larger grouping of today, there are striking differences. In 1953, the middle class, which saw itself as the logical successor of the British, spurned the PPP and Jagan. Despite this, the PPP was able to attract leaders of calibre, men who despite young, for their age were seasoned and sharp in the art of struggle and capable of discussing profound ideas and mobilising the masses for political action.
While the PPP leadership today is larger and its members more lettered, one can contrast this with earlier periods by noting that there was an ideological conviction that was present then that is now totally absent. One can also note that while many of the present leaders are highly qualified and lettered, they can hardly compare intellectually with those of earlier generations.
The problem I believe lies in the lack of experience of political struggle. The only cause that many today in the PPP may be acquainted with is containing aggression against the party ever since the 1997 elections. The only struggle many of them have ever known is the struggle to retain power and preserving the party in government.
There is also the problem of ideology. Martin Carter may have been labelled as an ultra-left. But he was never a hardcore communist; he had more of an infatuation with communism; he was more of a political gadfly. His ideological core was never sufficiently formed for him to be considered as even left much less ultra-left. In the pre-independence period his political ideology was very much in flux, his philosophical footing unsure and this led to impetuousness and, at times, an unmeasured approach to subjects.
His label of being an ultra-leftist was misplaced. It did not originate within the PPP even though they may have consummated it. It emerged because of the Report of the Robertson Commission which subtly promoted division by demarcating the leaders of the PPP into two categories, one, hardcore leftists, and the other more moderate socialists. Those seen to be supporting Jagan, regardless of whether this support was ideological, were grouped as communists; and those who were malleable were deemed to be moderate socialists.
The PPP has not such distinctions today. There are no communist and socialist factions within the party. In fact, there is very little of the left within the party. The PPP has turned right. It is now a pro-capitalist party forming governments which for the past 17 years have been firmly entrenched in the bourgeoisie class. In fact, its governments have had the distinction of administrating the most successfully run structural adjust programmes designed by the IMF and World Bank.
Compared to Carter’s time, the PPP is a vastly different party. Its leaders are now firmly entrenched in the capitalist class, and the party is as far from the working class as Carter was to being a genuine communist.
(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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