The solutions to Guyana's problems
The Freddie Kissoon column
Kaieteur News
April 8, 2007
There appeared a letter in Wednesday's issue of KN captioned, “Kissoon should support his comments with substantial solutions” written by Mr. Gord Ramkissoon, a Toronto-based Guyanese who writes that he visits Guyana yearly to participate in an annual golf tournament.
After making a positive remark about me, Mr. Ramkissoon in the lines to follow puts it this way about my KN columns; “I would like to see him (that is, me) presenting alternatives and solutions to the woes and problems...it is only appropriate that Kissoon supports his comments with substantial solutions.”
Obviously, Mr. Ramkisson would not have read all of my viewpoints since I first became a columnist in 1988. Since that time, I have spelt out in many of my analytical pieces, the structures that would propel Guyana into future where social peace and economic stability are assured. Many of my thoughts in this context are not original. A number of learned Guyanese and nationalistic organisations have defined the Guyanese solutions long before I became a newspaper commentator.
After 1992 when the PPP proved to be identical to the PNC in the way it handled power, the number of people and organisations that have advanced their thinking on Guyana's future has constantly increased. The solutions to Guyana's perennial dilemma are quite simple.
To understand how the medicine will work, one has to understand the malady. Guyana suffers from the over-politicisation of administration. The inimical factor in this scenario is that politics and race are intricately intertwined making this over-politicisation in Guyana a national disaster.
Over-politicisation is a post-colonial phenomenon. But each country in the Third World has its own problematics and specificities. In Guyana, over-politicisation has as its most tragic consequence, racial polarisation. No other Caribbean country has the inherent problems Guyana has emerged with after independence. This explains why Guyana has been left behind in the CARICOM family.
By over-politicisation we mean the injection of politics into all spheres of life in Guyana. Over-politicisation reached its climax in the promulgation of paramountcy of the party in 1976. Today, under the PPP, three permanent secretaries in the civil service are in the PPP Central Committee.
Against this background, we can restate the solutions to Guyana's problems. It has to start with the nature of the two major parties. They are intrinsically, political entities that are beyond redemption. They are not good for Guyana. The PPP in the sixties and the PNC in the seventies to the nineties, and the PPP since then have few parallels in these parts of the world.
Even though in Latin America, the two major parties in each country, especially in Colombia and Venezuela, alternated power among themselves when election time came around, they ruled in the interests of the wealthy classes. These Latin parties have never been as unpatriotic as the two major competitors have been in Guyana.
A good example of patriotism is the Republican Party in the US. We may not like the presidency of George W. Bush but one cannot deny his commitment to the American people. He loves them. He may not know he is acting against their interests but he is committed to the advancement of American society. The Democrats have their own agenda but it is an American agenda. Castro is a fascist but he is totally committed to Cuba. The French political parties are the most nationalistic in the world.
In Guyana, nationalism has been used as a front for the worst type of power destruction ever seen in the Caribbean.
Jagan in the sixties had no love for the Guyanese people. And I say this most unapologetically. Jagan's first love was communism. His loyalty was to the Soviet Union as the evidence clearly showed in 1975. At a meeting of the communist parties of the world called by the Soviet Union and held in Cuba, he was ordered to give support to the Burnham Government. His de facto deputy, Ranji Chandisingh, proposed instead a merger of the two parties which Jagan finally agreed to in 1985.
From the seventies onwards, Forbes Burnham acted out his obsessive ambitions. Guyana and the Guyanese were of secondary importance.
The PPP is in power again, and the welfare of the Guyanese people comes in a poor second after the love of power. From the era of self rule until the present time, the love of power, the obsession with it, drives the PPP and the PNC. The PNC and the PPP want power for power sake and not because they want to take Guyana in an assured future.
This is the crucial separation between Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean, especially Jamaica and Barbados. The JLP and PNP may fight each other bitterly in Jamaica but Jamaica is their first love. So it is in Barbados. Sadly, and most tragically, Guyana as a country has never come first in this land. It has always been party first and country second.
There is going to be a terrible and frightening moment of bravado and party chauvinism after Cricket World Cup (in this country) is over tomorrow. The ruling party and the presidency are going to convince themselves that they were right to interpret their August 2006 mandate and their present style of rule as divine intervention. They are going to tell themselves that they are great because look what they pulled off.
They will tell us that everybody is talking of the success the government has achieved.
On Friday evening, I saw a GINA programme on NCN in which all races of people and all classes of people offered positive views of how nice the National Stadium at Providence is and that Guyana did well in hosting CWC 2007.
Those opinions, sadly enough, will create a sense of superiority in our current leaders. They will further reinforce the habit to dominate. The President postponed further dialogue with the combined opposition in February citing the need to concentrate on CWC 2007. I doubt there will be resumption in the forthcoming future.
The success of CWC 2007 has seriously undermined the prospects of the presidency and the combined opposition having any meaningful engagement. Herein lies the tragedy of this country.
As the Government basks in the glory of its achievement of the Providence Stadium, and as party politics continues its relentless domination, I hope you remember this essay when the opposition cries out for talks with the government.
My point so far, Mr. Ramkissoon, is to show you where the solutions to Guyana's problems lie. They lie in the area of politics. We have to start from there. No wonderful economic blueprint will do it. There has to be an end to party domination if Guyana is going to have a future.
In this society, you cannot wish away reality, and the reality is that both the PPP and PNC have large constituencies in this country. The best political remedy is for a velvet revolution to sweep both parties out of Guyana's sociology. That is a remote possibility. So in the absence of such endeavour, one has to turn to the real answer – consensus politics or inclusive politics.
But it must involve all stakeholders. Joint government between the PPP and PNC will immediately demolish this entire country.
The ruling party, the PPP, has the answer to Guyana's perennial dilemma. Given racial voting, the PPP will remain in power. The PPP can only lose power if the PPP dissolves itself. After all the horrible things that happened to this country between 2001 and 2006 and yet the PPP won an electoral victory, means that the PPP cannot lose. What will it take for them to lose?
I close with the recommendation that has been around a long time now, Mr. Ramkissoon. Only consensus politics can stop this country's disintegration. My preference though is for a velvet revolution. I hope it comes one day.