Lunatic fringe, usual suspects, Creole middle class: The interactions

Mar 02, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – Yesterday, in analyzing the above categories, we stopped at the usual suspects (TUS). They make up the most barefaced hypocrites on Planet Earth. These people’s double standards are so repugnant that you would think they would at least mask their contradictions with some kind of diplomatic language.
The Creole middle class consists of some of the people who belong to TUS. But the CMC keeps the lunatic fringe (TLF) at a distance and always has, though there is always an amusing but dangerous relation between them. What shape do the interactions between the TLF, TUS, and CMC take since the fifties right up to 2022?
The story of CMC is too complex and involved to fit into one column. What follows are brief notes. The CMC in Guyana is one of the most class-conscious set of elites in the world. These are people with silicone smiles who do not play when it comes to class and colour.
They founded their own organisation long ago named the League of Coloured People (LCP). The LCP frowned on Burnham because his PNC party had too many ordinary Africans and too many were dark-skinned. The LCP had its own organisation named the National Democratic Party.
The CMC and the Portuguese community always had a distant relationship with dark-skinned Africans. What connected them with each other is their common dislike for Cheddi Jagan, the PPP and Indian yearning to live in Georgetown and pursuing a presence in the state.
The CMC and the Portuguese tolerated dark complexioned Africans because they were Christians, urban based, spoke standard English, embraced Western values, especially in music, art and literature. The problem the CMC and the Portuguese had was that they needed the numbers of the trade unions and the PNC if they were to succeed in chasing the Indians from the gates.
The LCP realised this and its party merged with Burnham’s PNC. The Portuguese knew that its party, the United Force (UF), had to join with the PNC if Jagan, the PPP and Indians were to be prevented from controlling government again. In fact, the PPP leadership had approached the UF for a coalition government after the indecisive results of the 1964 elections but was rebuffed.
The rejection was based on contempt and disdain. One famous Portuguese businessman, at a meeting of the UF to discuss the PPP’s suggestion said, “join with them people who can’t read and write properly?” The history then of the relationship between the CMC and the PNC and Africans in general has always been a strategic rather than an embracing one.
History has repeated itself. In the fifties and sixties, the CMC didn’t care for the general Black population but they needed their numbers to topple Jagan. Today, just as the CMC didn’t like Burnham but joined with him, the CMC does not like Aubrey Norton but with the prospects of a PPP government way into the future, the PNC and TLF are the only chance the CMC has of derailing the present PPP administration. Please see my column of Friday, December 24, 2021, headlined, “PNC election results 2021, Part 2: Norton faces colour and class.”
In 2022, the strategic relation between TLF, TUS and CMC is going to continue but as in the past, only for strategic reason. There will not be any overlapping. TUS will continue to send their letters on everything that they see bad, wrong and negative about the PPP to a particular newspaper they feel is on the same wave length with them.
The signatures are going to be the same regular dozens but they will not ask members of TLF to sign. They see the role of TLF as to do just what it is doing – preach crazy sermons, whip up frenzy in African Guyanese and hope the African Guyanese react.
The trouble with TLF, TUS and CMC, is that they are not people possessed of talent in political theorising. Some are educated, but except for black pudding maan, they are not trained in politics and history. They also know nothing about feminism and the class and colour basis of feminism in the US and Europe.
All the CMC has is colour, class status and a false sense of cultural superiority. TLF, TUS and CMC are hoping that instabilities could be generated if they keep banging away – TLF with their racist Facebook advocacy; TUS with their frequent letters to their acolytes in certain media houses; and CMC with their societal connections. Guyana has changed in ways unrecognisable from the era of “mo fyaah/slo fyaah”. I guess it also depends on if the PPP is willing to take on TLF, TUS and CMC.
(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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