Abuse is but a mere symptom of a deformed State

Jun 24, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – This November will mark the 45th anniversary of the holocaust at Jonestown, in the North West District of Guyana. In what was then the world’s deadliest human disaster, more than 900 Americans lost their lives in a mass murder-suicide.

A few months after that shocking incident, the late historian and co-leader of the Working People’s Alliance Dr. Walter Rodney gave a lecture in which he examined the type of society that produced such an atrocity.

In his lecture, Rodney observed that the type of society into which Guyana had descended provided the framework for the mass murder-suicide. He went on to identify some features of that society such as its uncritical welcome provided to Jim Jones, the head of the Jonestown cult. He spoke about the alienation of the state from the working classes and even the middle strata.

He went on to elaborate on the secrecy of the state which gave sanction to Jonestown. Guyana then was also an unaccountable state in which public accounts were unaudited for years. He spoke about official corruption, and perversion of justice, all of which were part of the degeneration of the State and which allowed Jonestown to happen.

One year after delivering that address, Walter Rodney was assassinated. He lost his life at the hands of the very State that he had critiqued.

Forty-five years after Jonestown, we are once again seeing signs of a decadent State. Numerous allegations are flying around about abuses of power, not only about sexual abuses but also about key players in the government acquiring lands in areas earmarked for major developments and about corruption in high places.

Abuse of power thrives in a State where citizens fail to hold their leaders accountable. Abuse of power occurs when people become so preoccupied with earning their daily bread that they fail to exercise civic action such as protests which are intended to hold leaders accountable.

This failure leads to a dangerous imbalance in which the ruling class can begin to assume that it has a free licence to do as it pleases.

Presently, the greatest abuse is the plundering of the country’s wealth. Guyana is being brutally exploited as a result of the oil contract which was signed by the APNU+AFC government and which is not being amended by the PPP/C government.

It is hard to imagine either Cheddi Jagan or Forbes Burnham living with such a contract. The present crop of political leaders appears to be timid in demanding that this contract be renegotiated and unfortunately, there is little pressure from the people to have this contract renegotiated even though a poor deal was negotiated by the previous government. Both the APNU and the AFC are no longer defending the oil agreement. So why then are there no mass protests over the contract given that there is a national consensus that Guyana was shafted in the agreement?

For one, the citizenry is divided along political lines. Supporters of each side see politics as a zero-sum game: criticism of the APNU+AFC is viewed as benefitting the PPP/C government and vice versa. In the resulting polarization, the public is not inclined to take a public stand in opposition to the agreement.

The oil companies are aware that as so long as the nation is divided, they will have their way. They are not bothered by the few individuals such as Glenn Lall who are protesting the oil agreement. Unless there are mass protests, nothing will change.

But there is a greater danger involved because of the failure of citizens to undertake civic and peaceful protests. When individuals fail to demand transparency, ethical behaviour, and integrity from their elected representatives, the foundations of democratic governance are eroded. A lack of transparency results and there is little incentive to force the government to be more accountable.

When leaders are not held accountable by an active and engaged citizenry, corruption scandals, nepotism, and favouritism become more prevalent. In such cases, officials feel that they can act with impunity. They believe that the consequences of their actions will be minimal and this lends itself to a wide range of abuses.

When citizens fail to take action to hold their leaders to account and when they fail to protest, this allows leaders to feel that they can escape punishment for wrongdoing, as we have seen so often in Guyana. Those who are punished are those that the main parties feel are expendable. However, the ‘big fishes’ swim their way around scandals.

Complacency breeds wrongdoing. When citizens refrain from exercising their right to peaceful assembly and peaceful protests, they inadvertently enable the abuse of power by diminishing the pressure on leaders to respect the rule of law.

Protests serve as a powerful means of deterring wrongdoing. When public officials and politicians feel that their actions will be protested publicly and by large numbers of persons, they are less likely to involve themselves in skullduggery and other forms of abuse.

Abuse is made more likely when there is alienation between voters and their leaders. It has become all too habitual for people to elect their leaders and then simply retreat into their private spheres, allowing their leaders to do as they please. Protests can serve to reduce this level of alienation and to establish a more accountable, transparent and less secretive State.

But it is also unreasonable for anyone to expect that people will simply come out and protest. People need to be mobilized. Regrettably, we have a weak civil society that can hardly muster a picket line. The people have become so attached to our main political parties that they are disinclined to follow persons who are not part of the country’s political establishment. Young people are no longer as militant as their predecessors in the 1970s and 1980s.

Unless this situation changes, we will find, as Walter Rodney did in 1979, that a malformed State will redevelop and this will grant further licence for abuses. The abuse that people are disgusted over is but a mere symptom of the type of State which exists, one that is unaccountable, lacking in transparency and divorced from the people.

(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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• Guyana, holocaust, Jonestown, North West District, Peeping Tom

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