Posted September 14th. 2002. - Special Feature by David Hinds

The WPA in time and Place

Quite a lot have been said and written about the WPA over the last few weeks. Some of the sentiments expressed have been positive while others have been negative. I would like to comment on two of these.

Many pundits, commentators, and other citizens have said that the WPA is dead, that it in fact died when Walter Rodney was assassinated. Never mind after Rodney's murder the party's membership increased, its structures improved, and its influence among the multi-racial masses deepened. No doubt Walter's death was a big blow to the WPA, Guyana, the Caribbean, and the oppressed world. But if the WPA died with Walter, as some would have us believe, then he would have taught us nothing.

The record shows that after Walter's death the WPA assumed the role of the chief political inspirer of the ant-dictatorial movement. I make bold to say that between 1980 and 1992, it continued the Rodney example as the leading political force both in terms of ideas and action, because it alone of the political parties was ideologically equipped to inspire the racial and class solidarity that were vital to the demise of the authoritarian PNC regime. What changed after Walter's death were the party's tactics.

Ironically, it was the demise of authoritarianism that rendered the WPA vulnerable. The return of electoral democracy signaled the return of out and out racial politics that devoured the WPA with a vengeance. There is no place for the WPA in the racial power struggle, except to turn it back. But unlike the pre 1992 era when there was an incentive for joint racial struggle against a regime whose actions were objectionable to all races, including its electoral supporters, the post 1992 era was marked by a regime that has been actively objected to by only one race. And the anti-regime struggle took place not in the labor arena but on the election campaign trail. Permanent electioneering has been the order of the day these last ten years.

Since such a situation is inhospitable to the WPA's non-racial ideology, it naturally suffered. Its ground support, in the face of a racial cold war that turned hot by 1997, was quickly summoned to the racial battlefields. Only the Amerindians remained constant. With the removal of the mass base, the internal structures wilted and its very fundamentals were questioned or some would say tinkered with. But if the passion waned, the idea remained constant.

So why this dead party, both as an organization and through initiatives and stands by individuals associated with it has at this critical juncture in our country's history emerged as the principal pole of moral leadership and the voice of reason? At first glance this may seem like a contradiction. But close examination will reveal that it is not. The problem with the formulation is the assumption that it begins with-that the WPA is dead.

The WPA is an idea, a social response, whose relevance and validity arise from the society's persistent need to fashion an alternative or "counter culture" to the dominant authoritarian, anti progressive, and counter progressive political culture. It is, therefore, wedded to the country's will and desire to survive the odds and always seek a better and better quality of life for all its citizens.

This function was carried out at different junctures by the anti-slavery forces, the early post-emancipation formations, such as the village movement, the trade unions, and the present political parties in their embryonic stages. It was the convergence of the PNC's and PPP's abdication of this historic responsibility to forge a progressive alternative to the colonization project that it succeeded and the masses of Guyanese recognition of this betrayal that propelled the emergence of the WPA.

The WPA, therefore, is not a traditional party. In Caribbean terms it is a new type of political formation that finds itself wedged somewhere between the traditional party form and the pressure group form. The WPA can be better characterized as the core of a social movement that responds to the society's cry for defense against socio-economic and political ills, including self inflicted ones. But unlike the traditional pressure group it engages the political process directly rather than indirectly; it does not engage from the outside.

Every modern society, particularly the segmented ones, needs such a force. Those without it such as Rwanda and Bosnia have imploded. And those with it, such as South Africa, have survived. In our state of acrimony and political vulgarity, our constant call for or celebration of the death of the WPA is really a call to crush the last vestige of organized political reason and morality in our midst at this particular historical juncture.

The political party in Guyana and the Caribbean, even when it sets out to do otherwise, has evolved into a special kind of formation that thrives and survives on the less than positive aspects of our experience, in particular fear, insecurity, defensiveness, opportunism, division, and conflict. This, the WPA, its entry into the electoral fray notwithstanding, is not-at least not yet. In fact its degeneration into that state is correctly frustrated by its inability to penetrate the walls of the race-based and opportunistic political order.

What has died, or some will charitably say declined, in the WPA is the "electoral party," in it. In fact that aspect of it was never properly born, for the party's core principles have not been palatable to Guyanese in their state of electoral rage. Some of us, although recognizing the futility of trying to attract broad electoral support in a racially charged atmosphere, are nevertheless convinced of the need to remain in the electoral arena as a means of acquiring political space for advancing the movement. Others of us have understandably grown tired of the strain of this flirtation with electoral rage and its racial and political imperatives on the party's historic mission and have said so. This is where the WPA is internally.

Formations such as the WPA thrive when the choices in the society are as clear-cut as they are in Guyana today. As the country takes a turn for the worse and each tribe turns to fear, defensiveness, and war mongering, and the government surrenders to both its trademark political clumsiness and the rise of the agents of violent counter-revolution, the need for reason beckons. That is what has been emanating from the WPA these past few weeks-- what some call the resurgence of Rodney's WPA and others see as the voice of the dead and the Afro Saxon. Call it what you will one thing is certain-The WPA voice is making life difficult for barbarism in all its forms and giving humanism and reason a chance.

Note the following: Two top members of the PNC speak out against the black extremists, a REFORM member criticizes utterances from the PNC, a CIVIC member calls the PPP to reason. Mark Benschop condemns the atrocities on the East Coast. All the parliamentary parties sit down together. And Buxton vows to expel criminals from their village.

Small, perhaps uncertain, steps, but in the circumstances, important ones.

Dr Hinds is a University Lecturer and Political Commentator and Activist. He currently teaches Political Science at Glendale College and Mt San Antonio College in California. Please send your comments on this article to dhinds6106@aol.com. An archive of Dr Hinds' other writings can be found on his website-guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com.