156 days: Trifecta of anti-Indianness, anti-PPPism and anti-democracy

Apr 12, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – A Member of Parliament telling a woman she needs a dildo; a minister allegedly sextexting a young woman; and a lawyer allegedly abusing a woman with racial invectives are not actions to be glossed over or even condoned.
There have been condemnatory voices and pens, particularly from TUS – the usual suspects –
but these alleged unpleasant behavioural traits have occurred right in the middle of the second anniversary of the failed five months of election rigging in which many voices that are so vehemently angry at this time were overwhelmingly and deliberately non-existent during this time in 2020.
It was around this very time, two years ago, that then Chief Election Officer (CEO), Keith Lowenfield announced that he had set a time limit of 156 days to complete a recount of the votes cast. This meant that GECOM would need four months to count 440,000 votes. In reality, starting from 7AM using five counting stations, the exercise could finish before Bourda Market closes its gates at 5PM on the same day.
The 156 days farce was just another in the millions of absurdities that characterised the five months of rigging but TUS and the Creole middle class (CMC) didn’t pen a letter with 40 signatures informing the CEO that his time line was not only comical but had embarrassed Guyana in the eyes of the world. If it takes 156 days to count 440,000 votes then it must take a million years to do a recount of the votes in a general election in India.
Now that we are into the anniversary of one of the most disastrous events to have occurred in the modern history of this country, it is pungently relevant to ask why the three incidents listed above are so excruciatingly painful to society than five months of rigging a general election which, had it succeeded, this country would have collapsed.
Now please don’t get me wrong. I did a column expressing my rejection of the dildo comment. I did a column with my advice to the lawyer that if he did use racially laced vocabulary, he must apologise. I am not on Facebook and I don’t use social media so I will need an extensive description about the sextexting incident. I honestly don’t trust the contents of the letters TUS writes in the newspapers because I know the substance TUS is made of.
Here is another question; why are those three incidents more germane to the preservation of the social fabric of Guyana than the racially determined post-election mayhem that broke out in Region Five when two powerful leaders of the PNC went down there and incited violence?
I saw a programme in which one panelist said that the PPP government isn’t going to recognise what TUS says because the PPP leadership is unforgiving about their silence during the five months of rigging. I think it is deeper than that. Here is my analysis.
I believe the PPP leaders do not see the behaviour of TUS and CMC as moment of silence but something psychologically deeper and it is this factor that keeps the angst alive in the PPP leadership. I am postulating the theory that the PPP believes that the reaction of TUS and CMC to the five months of internecine rigging was the trifecta of anti-Indianness, anti-PPPism and anti-democracy.
It is a complex situation. The PPP will come around in the next two years to having dialogue with the PNC. This is because PPP leaders do not see Freudian motives of contempt for Indian people that were behind the rigging of the election by the PNC. For the PPP, it was five months of a gruelling contest for power between the PPP and PNC that has dominated the political landscape since 1957.
There is more a hardened emotional inflexibility from the PPP hierarchy about TUS and CMC. PPP leaders believe TUS and CMC supported the rigging and some were comfortable with their reticence because of cultural ideology. They know TUS and CMC employed a racially based ideology to shape their attitude to the five months of widespread fraud.
It is for this reason, it is going to take a longer time for the hierarchy of the PPP to even react to what TUS and CMC have to say about political economy in Guyana much less to talk to members of TUS and CMC. The question is whether the PPP will ever reach out to them. Maybe once the PPP remains in office, it will not forgive people who saw the election rigging in ideologically racist terms.
(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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