The PPP and PNC have practised personality politics to their own detriment

by Emile Mervin

Much has been written in recent weeks about the leadership of the PNC, but rather than construe the many letters as attacks on the party’s leader, Mr. Robert Corbin, I think the collective voices were merely aiming to get the party to either radically change its approach to politics or continue to fossilize, and especially in light of 1) its ability to still collect a substantial number of votes, and 2) the obvious failings of the PPP under President Bharrat Jagdeo.

This observation in no way equates with my support for the PNC, but simply seeks to put the recent letters on the PNC in an objective perspective.

I said before and repeat for emphasis that the last elections revealed that Guyanese of both major races are fed-up with the political status quo and want to see changes.

After over forty years of watching the PNC and PPP take turns in power, Guyanese demonstrated they had no stomach for politics-as-usual when 1) half of the PPP’s support base eligible to vote stayed home, 2) the once-dominant PNC lost Parliamentary seats, and 3) the totally fresh AFC gained five Parliamentary seats, with an additional one yet to be officially determined.

It is unfortunate, yet not surprising, to read letters from those who came out in defense of Mr. Corbin, because traditionally, the PNC has been a party built up around personalities, with Forbes Burnham holding down the lead spot. Incidentally, this personality politics concept was just as dominant in the PPP under Cheddi Jagan.

This then explains, why after both men passed, both the PPP and the PNC have been gradually losing their original gravitational pull and appeal among their traditional support bases.

For example, after Burnham passed, we saw the bold efforts by Desmond Hoyte to change the PNC’s political and economic course, but while, in principle, he did well, he also lacked the personality cult dynamism of his predecessor and so the party began to lose its aura of invincibility.

After Jagan passed, we saw a series of carefully orchestrated maneuvers by his wife to take over the presidency, only to later step down because of claims her health was failing.

Her most notable action while in power seems to have been her preferred choice to replace her, Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo, who, while he may have a likeable personality, obviously lacks political currency among a significant portion of his party’s support base as the last election showed.

So, here we are today with two men – Jagdeo, heading the PPP Government, and Corbin, heading the Opposition PNC – who emerged into their current positions by virtue of the manner in which their respective political parties operated – the accentuation of political personalities over pragmatic politics.

Now, until and unless the leaders of both major parties shy away from this failed approach and adopt an approach that allows ideas to trump personalities, Guyana will continue to witness the emergence of what the PPP delivered to the people in the person of Mr. Jagdeo: a political novice thrown in a heavyweight fight swinging at the shadow while missing the real object; and what the PNC delivered in the person of Mr. Corbin: a political foot soldier who was effective during the time of personality politics, but who has been ineffective once promoted to general of the troops.

Before I conclude, I wish to admonish shared governance advocates who firmly believe the best solution to the current dilemma created by both the PPP and PNC rests on this novel shared governance concept, that as long as the PPP and PNC have to pander to Indians and Blacks, respectively, to remain viable, then there is going to be friction that will eventually lead to constant fighting.

And not only is a rush into political marriage for sheer convenience a recipe for social disaster, it could also be a first step towards emergence of a corrupt dictatorship in which the PPP and PNC are fused to block out any other political opposition.

Both the PPP and the PNC have to undergo a metamorphic change from the inside out and from the top down before they can become suitable and convincing candidates of the shared governance concept where all Guyanese can benefit and feel secure.

Ergo, this process requires time for trust to be established, and the best place for both parties to start is in the manner in which their leaders are chosen.

Here’s a novel concept worth considering. Give potential leaders opportunities to vent their views on issues and then let there be party primaries in all regions to select the best candidates to represent the parties.

By Election Day, the voters would have had access to the ideas of the their next national leaders in both parties and they will then know how to vote.

Is this just another form of ethnic cleansing?

by Keith R. Williams

There is something ominous in the Minister of Home Affairs singling out of a particular segment of the population for special attention in Guyana’s so called robust War on Drugs. Particularly when that segmented group identified by the Minister, to wit, unemployed young people, will be comprised of large majorities of African Guyanese young men. It is amazing that were the President of the United States of America or any major Law Enforcement Authority in that country to make this kind of statement, they would immediately be bombarded with protestations of racial targeting. Ironically in Guyana where the demographic group affected would be similar to that in the US, the Minister of Home Affairs, Mr. Clement Mr. Rohee, can propose this policy with such grave racist implications and undertones with all the confidence that it will escape scrutiny and challenge. Why? Because clearly in his view, in his assessment of the power balance ratio in Guyana, the children of a particular group of citizens are easy targets to go after in maintenance of the illusion that there is really an administrative interest to mount a robust assault against drug trafficking in Guyana.

Imagine that in every normal part of the world where drug trafficking has become a major concern of political administrations, the effort to contain it is rightfully focused on the large operators ensconced behind legitimate business fronts, and the agencies that operate to launder the proceeds from the trade. In Guyana, this nation where one can experience excruciating cognitive dissonance from trying to figure out the reasoning behind some of the policies adopted by the powers that be, and their prima facie acceptance from a sometimes less than curious independent press corps, things consistently seem to trend to the contrary.

Recently, the President of Guyana, in response to murmurs of dissatisfaction from quarters in US administration regarding our efforts at drug interdiction and money laundering, made statements that suggested that he was not of a mind to jeopardize prospects for local and foreign investments by scrutinizing the source of wealth of those so inclined, or words to that effect. Should some of us not presume that from this expressed presidential position, and the tone of the Minister of Home Affairs recent pronouncement, that our children will have to become pawns to protect a political or economic preserve. For what else is there to construe from the unambiguous comment quote, “I have made it known publicly that I, as Minister of Home Affairs, intend to carry a strong fight, irrespective of the criticism that people may make against me. There will be zero tolerance with respect to persons who are engaged in drug trafficking in this country. It is not something to be tolerated,”. “He further noted that great efforts will be made to curb this action, especially among unemployed young people, whom he believes are more vulnerable”. As a matter of logic and commonsense, shouldn’t those great efforts be concentrated especially among those who we know possess the means and the influence to keep this trade going? Is the selling of a couple of spiffs of marijuana at a street corner or from some remote bottom house or shack more likely to concretize drug trafficking in Guyana than say, the shipping of chemical compounds derived from the cocoa or opium plant?

Bearing in mind the importance of disclaimers when commenting on these kinds of issues in our discussion space, let me assure all and sundry that I am certainly not advocating for a total ignoring of any aspect of drug use and drug trafficking among any population segments in Guyana. I am saying that unless someone is retarded or believe in the tooth fairy, the foregoing statement of policy by the Minister of Home Affairs clearly implies a discriminate targeting of a specific segment of the Guyanese home bound population for incarceration. We can only interpret his intentions from the words with which he announces or illuminates them. And a zero tolerance in the case of drug trafficking that targets especially the young and unemployed, rather than the mysteriously rich and camouflageable employed, seem to be a coded assertion as to who will be attracting the main focus and attention of law enforcement in Guyana. I am not averse to law enforcement intervention to make Guyana drug free. I am averse to my sons, my nephews and my brothers and other male relatives becoming sacrificial lambs to the political correctness of presenting an illusion before international donors, and protecting an ensemble of local sacred cows.

In my humble opinion, this IS just another form of ethnic cleansing.

Bishram is Being Selectively Judgemental

by Keith R. Williams

In a Stabroek News Letter to the Editor published on April 8th, Vishnu Bishram laments the decline of Moral Values in Guyana and South Africa based on incidents he is aware of where people stood by in apathy while others were victimized:

It is reprehensible to read about how the family was robbed and the ladies molested on Sheriff Street while passersby stood by and did nothing to assist the victims. Here in South Africa, similar incidents occur regularly in the big cities and no one comes to the rescue of the victims. I was told to be careful wherever I travel. A regular warning is: “You will be robbed, perhaps even stabbed and others will just look and pretend they see nothing. No one comes to your rescue.” How sad, Guyana and South Africa have declined in civil and moral values. So far, I have been lucky in South Africa – not an incident and this is not my first trip to this beautiful country.

We have to construe from this that Mr Bishram considers the apartheid society of South Africa to have been of a higher moral standard than its current democratic condition because of personal criminality that occurs in the latter. I wonder whether who is in charge in South Africa has anything to do with this warped kind of reasoning. Because if we are using bystander apathy in the face of victims being abused as a yardstick or gauge of moral declination, I would remind Mr Bishram that a lot more people were standing by apathetically while a lot more victims were being brutalized for the decades the apartheid system endured in South Africa. To imply that higher moral standards existed in that era as opposed to today, (and this is not intended to deny or be flippant with the pain of the victims of today’s crimes), is to diminish the human value of those who were the victims then. I believe that it is quite reasonable for me to conclude from this that Mr Bishram, like too many of today, sees victims and abusers through a prism that highlights who they are rather than what is being to and by them.

The world is standing by apathetically today while genocide and ethnic cleansing is taking place in Darfur Sudan. I would like to submit to Mr Bishram that in terms of degrees of declination of moral standards, the examples he chooses pales in comparison to what that represents. People get mugged and robbed on the subways of New York where people are packed like sardines with nary a murmur or glance from those feet away from the happenings. If bystander apathy in the face of victims being abuse is to be used as examples of how far the moral standard of societies have declined, I will put it to Mr Bishram that his anecdotal experiences are too personally selective to be held up as evidence of such declination. Not when he can so flippantly ignore the vicissitudes of an era of a scant two decades ago.

The absence of Good Samaritanship is neither unique to Guyana or South Africa. Horrors are occurring in every part of this world in front of, and without the intervention of, witnesses that are within reaching distance. It is a situation that endures because, despite the platitudes that loftily emanates from our mouths ever so often, we are basically clannish according to varying characteristics, and are wont to sympathize and empathize purely on that basis. Yes, the atrocity in Sheriff Street and the bystander apathy witnessed by Mr. Bishram do represent evidence of a divorcement from the very things that are supposed to set us apart from our biped and quadruped companions on this earth. But to suggest that they represent a more vicious degree of immortality than the racist brutalization of millions of people is a tad offensive to me. And I am sure it would too for the tens of millions of Indigenous South Africans who had to put up with apartheid.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

by Keith R. Williams

In the Gospel according to Saint Luke, Chapter 10 verses 30 to 37, Jesus used the “Parable of the good Samaritan” to illustrate the context of the Christian tenet of “loving thy neighbor as thyself”. The coincidence of circumstances that link the story he told to those in his audience, with the experience of the victims of that ill fated incident in front of a night club in Sheriff Street, surely beg that we in and of Guyana reflect deeply on the subtle desensitization that seem to have usurped and overcome the influence of our compassionate souls. Our Nation has become the home to endless numbers of atrocities, seemingly occurring in every format. The suffering and abuse of the most vulnerable in our society; the aged, women and children, elicit a cycle of interest that endures for less time than our preoccupation with matters of materiality, with the symbolic, with the mundane. So analyzing the circumstances of this latest episode of bystander apathy, I am left to ponder whether we have not indeed crossed that rubicon of sanity into insanity, as editorialized sometime back by one of the independent dailies.

In response to a question of what it would take to gain eternal life, Jesus Christ advised the questioner that quote, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself” end quote. And when the man queried who qualified as his neighbor, Jesus related this parable. He told a story of a man on a journey from Jerusalem to Jericho who was set upon by bandits. They brutalized and robbed him, and departed about their business leaving him bleeding and more dead than alive on the ground. And a religious leader passed by, saw him, and was not moved by conscience to intervene, to offer succor to this victim. And a Levite also passed him by, and was no more moved by the compassion of his soul to help someone visibly in dire need of his aid. But then the good Samaritan came by, and he took the victim into his arms, and he and cleansed and bound his wounds, and took money from his own pockets and paid for the further care that this victim might need to get back on his feet. And the question posed to the audience at the conclusion of this parable was, which of these bystanders, they thought, was a good neighbor to the innocent who was set upon by bandits.

It is quite clear that there were no good Samaritans outside or inside that night club in Sheriff Street during the early morning hours when innocents were being set upon by thugs and bandits. It is clear that the taxi driver, the night club owner, and all of those who stood by somnolently and apathetically and allowed such an assault upon innocents to occur, are classic current day examples of the religious leader and Levite in Jesus’s “Parable of the Good Samaritan”. And it is abundantly clear to me that the fact that these thugs could have re-entered that club and continued to wine and dine absent reactions of guilt and remorse from them and from all of the other bystanders to this horrible and latest atrocity, that we certainly have crossed that rubicon that demarcates the difference between a society nationally cemented to the ideal of a common good, and one that is little more than an assemblage of hodgepodge and hedonistic organisms. I pray that the Good Lord find the forgiving benevolence in his heart to continue to help us all. For certainly since we do not seem inclined to help one another, we are neither entitled to, or deserving of, his immaculate concern.

When does a win not equate with success?

by Emile Mervin

I’d like to piggyback on Mr. Shawn Mangru’s rather thought-provoking letter in the Guyana Chronicle, “President must fulfill pre-election promises,” (September 12).

Before I do that, permit me to say that Mr. Mangru’s letter bore some very revealing statistics:

183,867 out of 492,369 represent only 37.343 % of the total votes registered, which percentage when translated to the total population of the country indicates that only 286,513 people supported the PPP/C out of an estimated population of 767,245 (CIA fact book July 2006). To put it the other way, 62.657 % or 489,732 of the nation did not support the winning party.

Out of the 37.343% votes cast in their favour, let us estimate 5% were African Guyanese, 5% Amerindians and 4% mixed. Subtracted from the 37.343%, this only leaves 23.343% of the registered vote (492,369) or 114,933 as Indian Guyanese who voted for the PPP/C. Using the estimate of Indians as 50% of the population, then the registered Indian vote should approximate 246,184 (1/2 of 492,369) out of which only 114,933 voted PPP/C, which means that 131,251 Indians who registered to vote did not vote for the PPP/C. Nationally, this indicates that only 23.343% or 179,098 out of 383,622 (50% of 767,245) Indians voted PPP/C. To put it the other way, an estimated 204,524 or more than half the Indian population did not vote PPP/C.

If these statistics are accurate, the letter should have had a caption that read, “Almost half of PPP traditional support base did not vote,” instead of the one that appeared in the Chronicle.

Not only was the letter thought-provoking and revealing, it was very instructive as it gave a statistical analysis of how Indian Guyanese, in particular, voted. Here’s one eye-opener: even though the PPP won the elections with expected support from its traditional base, a significant portion of that base just didn’t show up for the PPP on Election Day.

This easily and readily tells me that not every win should be equated with success.

Yes, I know that winning and success are often synonymous, but there comes a time when one may experience a win, yet those who should be sharing in the celebration actually feel like they were the ones losing all along.

Questions: Did the almost half of traditional PPP supporters who stayed at home do so because they felt they were losers for the past five years?

Did the ruling party’s [mis]handling of the crime situation and the economy in the past five years create voter apathy among its support base? Or did the support base join the other voters in being fearful of Election Day violence, as some have surmised?

Since the post-elections statistics started flowing, I have been asking what was behind such a low voter turn out even though the government decided to make Election Day a national holiday, perhaps hoping to encourage voters to show up in large numbers?

While we may spend some time analysing what went wrong, I am sure the ruling party and its die-hard supporters will likely say, “It is water under the bridge. A win is a win, and we will take it anyhow we can. We won.”

Well, not so fast. If winning the elections and retaining power are what this whole exercise is all about, then the PPP won and we all should shut up and go home. But this exercise is more than just about winning elections; it is about producing results in government and getting people to rally around the producers of the results to ensure continuity.

When the people showed up in shockingly low numbers on Election Day, can’t it be argued that the government’s performance – in office and on the campaign trail – was weak? Worse, when half of the ruling party’s voting base stayed home, can’t it be argued that the party experienced a mutiny in its base?

It is true that everybody loves a winner, and the PPP won, but with the lowest voter turn out in history and the loss of half of its voter base, clearly not everybody loves the PPP. Something must have been radically wrong with the incumbent PPP’s game plan for galvanising the bulk of the electorate to its side, even if its game plan for itself worked fine.

Not very long ago, there was this gentlemanly saying, “It’s not whether you win or lose; it is how you play the game that really matters.”

Today, as we have come to see, winning is everything, and while the PPP and its die-hard supporters may think they won it all by pointing to the fact that the party executed its game plan with strategic moves, thereby gaining 54% of the votes cast and an extra couple of parliamentary seats, these folks have to stop and think about the aforementioned points of lowest voter turn out and half of the party’s voter base staying home as reasons why their win does not necessarily translate into the people’s success.

Until we can resolve this enigma, celebrating this win is pretty much limited! And thank you, Mr. Mangru.