Mia Mottley knows who and what are the problems in Guyana

Jun 22, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – When Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley was here in February, the chairman of the Decade of People of African Descent Assembly – Guyana Chapter IDPADA-G accused the Barbadian Prime Minister of ignoring three things one of which never existed, the other is a fiction and the third is a distortion of Guyanese history.
Let’s elongate on them. He accused the PM of ignoring Guyana’s internal situation. He noted: “Guyana`s internal antagonisms/conflicts are treated as minor, or mere irritants, and responded to nonchalantly; with a shrug of the shoulder; and the non-application of her, otherwise, profound analytical methodologies.”
What does the Prime Minister know about Guyana? Guyana’s sociological conflicts only surfaced when the APNU+AFC lost the 2020 election. No one wrote CARICOM Prime Ministers expressing their intervention between 2015 and 2020, when the 2015 election result was almost 50-50. There were no internal conflagrations then in Guyana. Between 2015 and 2020 there wasn’t even one.
Prime Minister Mottley knew that in 2011, the incumbent lost its majority but no one attempted to burn down the country. She knew in 2015, the PPP lost the election and no one subsequently tried to create “mo fyaah/slo fyaah.”
Ms. Mottley obviously knew that in 1992, 1997 and 2001, post-election mayhem took place because election losers did not want to accept defeat. She came to Guyana knowing that one month after the losers conceded defeat there was post-election violence in Region Five. Ms. Mottley knows that Guyana’s conflicts are manufactured because those who accept to participate in elections do not accept when they lose.
The chairman apprised the Prime Minister of the situation through these words: “The evolution of the Guyanese society mirrors inequitable development, starting with the enslavement of the Amerindians that crescendoed with the enslavement of people of African descent and the institutionalisation of disparity and inequity to the extent that a conversation is urgently required to redress that legacy.”
It is naïve for the chairman to think that the PM is not familiar with the story of Guyana. For 33 years, from 1964 to 1992, then from 2015 to 2020 the African oriented party, the PNC, had state power. Of those 33 years, PNC leader, Forbes Burnham possessed power for 21 years.
So great was Mr. Burnham’s achievements and legacy that Mr. Vincent Alexander along with Mr. Burnham’s trusted aide, Elvin Mc David, founded the Forbes Burnham Foundation. As President, David Granger housed four foundations in his private residence named after Burnham.
The question that the chairman must answer is – what became of the 33 years of PNC’s hegemony? I used the word, “hegemony” because in 1976, Mr. Burnham invented the doctrine of “paramountcy of the party” which enunciated a new political architecture in which the ruling party would have jurisdiction over state institutions. By the time Mr. Burnham died in 1985, the PNC party has jurisdiction over 80 percent of the economy.
Let’s expose more of the contents from the chairman’s letter in the newspapers headlined: “PM Mottley smoothed over Guyana’s internal dynamics.” He noted that IDPADA-G wrote Ms. Mottely in her capacity as CARICOM chairman to intervene in the election crisis and for her to understand that Guyana’s problem goes way beyond election competition but ethnic divisions.
IDPADA- G complained that the organisation got no response. This is the second time in the newspapers that the organisation has lamented the non-response from the PM. But much to the disappointment of people who know politics in Guyana, it was intellectually myopic to write Ms. Mottley. Here is why the PM did not answer.
First, if Guyana’s problem was more than periodic elections, then why the party that the chairman of IDPADA-G represents in the election commission (GECOM) accepted victory in 2015 and formed the government for five years? Why when it lost in 2020, elections become less pressing than the ethnic question?
Secondly, the chair of IDPADA-G must have been seen to be practicing conflict of interest. He was involved in the election as a GECOM commissioner and accepted the declaration of results of Thursday, March 5, then of Friday, March 13. It was only when the world rejected the false numbers in those declarations that a letter was sent by IDPADA-G to the PM. Ms. Mottley had to see it as a conflict of interest because a party representative in GECOM was asking to downplay the importance of the election.
Thirdly, in citing the ethnic divisions in Guyana to the PM, the chairman was unwise to write the PM in his capacity as chairman of an African-oriented organisation. It would have been best to have asked for one of those among the usual suspects to do so.
(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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