Some interesting words from a seasoned politician

Mar 17, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I just write my thing, keep to myself and watch how society unfolds in my country. I have argued long and hard that there are people masquerading as civil society, giving civil society a bad name and whose motives are open to extensive questioning. This is not to say that there are not genuine civil society organisations in Guyana. There are and many of them are important.
The Bar Association has its faults. It can do more but the Bar Association is a bona fide civil society group. It confronted the government and won its battle over compulsory DNA testing for persons arrested. The government backed down.
This country owes many civil society organisations an unpaid debt in 1997. That was the year when civil society leadership under Yesu Persaud secured the intervention of CARICOM when the PNC refused to accept the election results. The superb period of civil society in that period of our history will be recorded in the second installation of Yesu Persaud’s autobiography, which I think will be published posthumously.
This is a fascinating country. What civil society did in 1997 was replicated in 2020 in identical ways. Can you imagine, the Private Sector Commission was instrumental in 1997 in saving electoral democracy and did the exact thing in 2020? The churches, all denominations, are a powerful civil society forum.
One of the mistakes (for many they are deliberately being culturally biased), we make in this country is that we assign civil society status to Christian churches only. But there are influential Hindu and Muslim churches in Guyana which are essentially part of civil society and we must assign the same weight to their views and positions.
There is a civil society grouping in this country that we inject our class bias in de-recognising. The Rastafarian community has a genuine grievance in relation to the draconian penalties for conviction of small amounts of marijuana. Many civil society entities never seek to consult the Hindu, Muslim and Rastafarian churches on any major national issues. For example, the Catholic Church and three other bodies, including the Trade Union Congress have formed a civil society forum to give expression to Article 13 of the Constitution. I don’t know if the non-Christian churches were invited to join.
Here is what Mr. Ralph Ramkarran wrote about civil society two weeks ago, “…no other body of consequence to which respect and recognition can be given, has emerged. The recent political criticisms against the Government by a group of largely unknown bodies, some of which have already withdrawn their sponsorship of the statement, which appear to have been organised for the purpose, fell flat.”
Now bear in mind, these are not the words of Frederick Kissoon. Mr. Ramkarran is not in the company of the PPP or the government. He is the leader of an opposition party, ANUG. He is not known to be echoing sentiments in constant praise of the PPP government. As someone who has been in politics many, many moons ago, Mr. Ramkarran knows how civil society once operated in Guyana, and the value it brought. When he used the words, “largely unknown bodies,” he knows what he is talking about. He is involved in politics.
In a recent column, I made reference to the professional remarks of Mr. Christopher Ram and opposition politician Timothy Jonas. Both men offered their honest opinion on how they saw one of the amendments to the Representation of the People Act. It will divide Region Four in four electoral sub-divisions.
This is commonsensical and logical. It is a large district where the bureaucracy is burdensome. Both Ram and Jonas when interviewed saw the changes as merely administrative. This was contrary to the attitude of an organisation that saw mischief in the amendment.
When organisations like these are formed and use the banner of civil society, it gives civil society a bad name. How can one argue against dividing the large Region Four district into four for the purpose of counting? Almost half the votes in the 2020 general election came from one district alone – Region Four.
I am relieved that Mr. Ramkarran has penned a few wise words on civil society in Guyana in 2022, no doubt reacting to the overnight birth of a plethora of “civil society” entities. Recently, the president, the AG, and two other ministers reacted, to many of these groups that Mr. Ramkarran classified as “largely unknown.” The government’s reply carried the familiar refrain – how credible are these organisations, what physiology they have?
(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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