The tragic death of working class politics in Guyana

Dec 19, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – The High Court has ruled against a foreign company, Schlumberger-Guyana Inc. to building a storage facility for radioactive material in Houston, an area that is residential. I can’t believe a Guyanese would argue against that decision.

This is not a pepper sauce factor or a juice –making establishment. We are taking about dangerous chemical in a populated neighbourhood. The writ was filed by two members of the Veira dynasty that originally owned Houston – Danuta and Vanda Razik.

It should be obvious to any sane person that the Radzik sisters would have been financially supported in their court quest by other elite members of the Houston community. The issue in the Schlumberger case is not the plaintiff and their class position. The point is that someone needed to ask the court for a pronouncement on a company that was building a radioactive chemical facility in their neighbourhood. When you think of Guyana’s complete inability to handle an emergency spill in that structure then one should thank the litigants.

But class analysis is extremely relevant in a comparative context. The rich residents of Houston will allow not for encroachments into their district of things they feel should not be accepted. They have money power to back it.

The situation is identical with Subryanville. Over the past 100 years, Subryanville came to be the exclusive ownership of certain families. Despite, the area is part of the public domain in Guyana, the rich residents of Subryanville have gone to court several times the past 40 years to stop types of business they feel should not be permitted.

The wealthy elite in that community decide on permits based on class and colour. The reactions of the elitist residents of Subryanville to newcomers make for a fascinating study of the residual effect of class and colour in an age where such aristocracy died a long time ago.

So while the Schlumberger defeat is good news, the bad thing is that there is an ocean of illegal mistreatments that working class folks have to live with. The illegalities of some of these situations are so obvious it makes Guyana a pariah in a world where working class folks can have resort to friendly, understanding civil society groups and sympathetic lawyers.

Let us start with mini-bus drivers. I do not support mini-bus drivers. Theirs is a subculture that needs to be eradicated in this country. They are a reckless stratum that society has to confront. One solution is state-owned buses that operate on a one-stop basis.

But regardless of how uncouth they are, the principle of equality before the law applies to them. In a market economy where there are no price controls, the state cannot stop them from responding to inflationary trends. The identical situation obtains with speedboat operators.

It is only with a faltering economy and a range of price controls applied over the economy can you stop a mini-bus driver or speedboat operator from instituting fare increase. I have long argued, and I mean long ago, that the mini-bus drivers should test in court the action of the state stopping them from fare increase.

I believe both types of operators – mini-buses and speedboats- would win their case because even a half-good lawyer can succeed by arguing that Guyana is governed by market forces and there is no emergency in the economy that necessitates price controls.

It will not happen in Guyana because these categories of income-earners are working class people without the finance to employ top-notch lawyers. We do not have civil society organisations to pursue seek litigation on their behalf. Guyana does not have many lawyers driven by social justice that would go to court on their behalf.

It is for this reason I think working class politics is dead in this land. This is in sharp contrast to the era I grew up in. Back then there was a plethora of lawyers who would file a writ on behalf of a donkey-cart owner if the state harasses him. That was age where class prejudice was confronted; people were proud of their dark-skin; the mighty could not do what they want because there would be hundreds of picketers outside their door; and politicians of all stripes would be in the front line of the demonstration.

Where has that world gone to? I saw Banks DIH officials refused to come out of their compound to speak to the Traffic Chief on a complaint that they had erected illegal signs on the public parapet. That hegemony of a private company was met with complete silence. I’m glad I am getting old. I don’t want to think about Guyana anymore.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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