A deadly, dangerous and deceitful exchange
Freddie Kissoon Column
Kaieteur News
February 14, 2007
About three years into Dr. Cheddi Jagan's rule, around 1996 to be precise, the following saying became increasingly popular: “ Guyana had an exchange not a change.” This phrase could be heard frequently among a wide cross section of the Guyanese public.
I don't know who coined it, but I have heard this sentence so often that I know it is one of the first things to come to mind whenever people meet to have light conversation and knock the government.
The harsh truth about it is that it is a correct observation. In the way the PPP/C practises government, one can easily say we have had an exchange not a change after 1992. In other words, we threw out the PNC and put in the PPP but the way the party in power runs the government and the country is the same whether it is the PNC or the PPP. Why is that so?
The answer lies in a flawed theoretical formulation that underpins the structure and purpose of government under the PPP/C. This conceptualisation is so faulty that its weaknesses make it a dangerous policy. This approach is an invention by the core of the PPP leadership that goes back to the time of winning the 1992 election, so I will say that the shapers of this theory is the PPP rather than the PPP/C; the latter I believe has absolutely no input into the theoretical formulations that make up the outlook of the Government of Guyana.
The yardstick with which the PPP governs derives from the standards of rule under the unelected PNC government from 1968 until 1992 and that is how it arrives at judgements in government.
Under the PNC, whether under Burnham's autocracy or Hoyte's benevolent dictatorship, government was not democratic but despicably intolerant and tempestuously contemptuous of democratic norms. The Burnham and Hoyte regimes were incandescent with hauteur and hubris.
The PPP came to power in 1992 and its interpretation of democracy is that it must be a system better than what the PNC offered. Here is where the flawed theorisation of the PPP becomes extremely dangerous. I believe we have passed the danger point and the PPP has become an intolerant administration without any sensitivities about democratic violations.
The crucial point to note is that the PPP's position is that it is a better ruler than the PNC because it does not do the harsh and cruel things the PNC did.
By now you would have seen the untenable nature of the PPP's outline. It is not that a democratic blueprint is being used to run the country. The country is being governed on the basis of Burnhamism wrapped in better paper and shared out with less crudity. In other words then, the PPP's framework is situated in an ongoing comparative context rather than in a philosophical mould.
This is where you will find the reason for the popular statement—an exchange, not a change.
Every utterance, every move, every policy of the PPP is formed within the comparative mode. The comparison is the PNC. The thinking that underlies this policy is accepted at the ideological level by the PPP leadership and constitutes the fulcrum on which governance rests. The PPP, then, cannot be a democratic administration because it is using a wrong guide-book. Let us demonstrate this with hypothetical examples.
If the PNC was uncaring about salary increases, then the PPP gives a percentage that was better than anything the PNC did, therefore PPP leaders say their rule is better than the PNC.
If the PNC fired 1,000 state employees without due resort to natural law, then if we fire 10 it could never attain the numbers the PNC reached, therefore the PPP is a better government. If the PNC put its own party hacks in positions of power, then let's put our own too, but don't let it be crude as the PNC's method, therefore the PPP is a better government.
The PNC had controlled the university when it was in power; make sure our domination is not as vulgar as the PNC, thus the PPP is a better government. If we tamper with the judiciary, then it can't be as bad as under the PNC, therefore the PPP is a better government.
If we reduce the Council of the University to a rubber stamp, then that could never be compared to what the PNC under Burnham did when lecturers were denied employment. Therefore the PPP is a better government. This is the standard of judgement that goes into the making of government.
It also explains the dilemma Jimmy Carter left with. The reason for that popular expression is now better understood. Because the PPP does the same things the PNC did when it was in office, it is natural to say that we have had an exchange, not a change. Herein lies the world's great disappointment with the PPP. The fires, the killings, the divisions, the sadness, the agonies that have devastated this nation could have been avoided if the PPP had risen to the occasion in 1992.
This is what Carter, we in Guyana , and the world expected of them. The prediction was that the PPP would have erased the past and erected a new foundation of rule based on all that was exemplary in the countries that went from authoritarian systems to democratic transitions.
What the PPP has done, instead, is to offer government that is better than the PNC. But is it democratic government? And what is democratic government? That is not so hard to find out. The world has many handbooks on what it is.
The PPP has an obsession with this comparative method. Talk to any PPP leader and when you rebuke or castigate him or her about wrong-doing, the 28 years yardstick immediately comes into play.
Then you are told that the PNC would have done worse. I could give practical examples but would breach the terms of confidentiality if I do so but this comparative method I have seen in all PPP leaders including the President.
Mrs. Janet Jagan embodies it more than any other inside the PPP. All PPP leaders who supported the expulsion of Khemraj Ramjattan have said that the PNC (especially under Burnham) would not have allowed such an outspoken person inside their party.
The tragedy of this country is that government is being run as a form of competition rather than as a desire to bring democracy to a territory that never had it.