Guyana Caribbean Politics

I have found it extraordinary that Dr. Randy Persaud can explain the Working People Alliance progression to what seems likely to be an alliance with the People's National Congress as being due to Black Nationalism.

It is no secret that the person who is most responsible for the present posture of the Working People Alliance is Dr. Rupert Roopnarine and I can tell you he is no Black nationalist.

The problem with the Working People Alliance is their ideological sterility which opens them to all manner of influences. but to argue that the WPA is being driven by the ideology of Black Nationalism is to fail to understand that the party embraces no ideology at the moment.

In his analysis Randy Persaud says that: “The early WPA and Rodney specifically, had two intellectual pillars – viz. a historical materialist critique of oppression, and a Black Power critique of colonial and imperialist domination.

I have suggested recently that the WPA has abandoned the historical materialist critique founded in class analysis, and has now openly embraced a narrow and de-historicised form of Black Nationalism.”

I wish to assure him that it is not just the Working People's Alliance that has abandoned the left, even though that itself does not justify the ideological sterility that most of the old parties suffer from.

The PNCR today is no longer shouting about the struggling going on. It has long abandoned its flirtation with the left, but interestingly has never redefined whether it purports to be a working-class party, or whether the REFORM wing has totally taken control of political influence within the PNCR.

And the PPP has lost all pretence that it is a working-class party. It has become “bourgeoisified”, more interested in relating to the interests of the local and foreign business class than it is to searching for a living wage, something that it had promised more than 15 years ago.

The mistake that many people make is to assume that, because Rodney's international stature was built upon his Pan-Africanism, this would be the philosophy that he would embrace in Guyana .

He was able to apply his leftist beliefs to the concrete reality of Guyana and interestingly to bury his Pan-Africanism and foster the country's first genuine multi-racial platform against the Burnham dictatorship.

Specific historical and social circumstances would give rise to peculiar forms of struggle. Any good Marxist ought to know this.

The African reality and the European reality may both be explained in terms of class but, since we are dealing with different historical conditions, they all gave rise to different explanations and solutions.

The point I am making is that not because someone is Pan-African means that person, faced with the reality of a situation that calls for different solutions, finds his Pan-Africanism as an obstacle.

Rodney transcended that because he recognised the concrete social reality that gave rise to Pan-Africanism and the specific reality of the Guyanese situation, where race divided the political process or rather, as he saw it, was used as a tool of division.

In fact it may interest Randy that Rodney saw race as a myth in Guyana . He saw things in terms of class, arguing that race was being used to divide the working class.

I find it ironic that the Working People's Alliance should be calling itself Rodneyite and yet many of its members embrace a construct that is distant from the one that Rodney employed.

Hinds needs to clarify whether he agrees with Rodney's assessment that race is a myth in Guyana .

I agree with Randy Persaud that I have never read anything on Hinds about the need to balance the security forces in Guyana . He has been a strong advocate of power-sharing arrangements, even though he is vigorously opposed to Ravi Dev's solution which is for a federated Guyana .

Hinds should now clarify whether he supports executive power sharing of the PNCR model, and especially whether he feels that whoever wins the elections should move towards an ethnically balanced security sector as the means of addressing the principal ethnic security dilemma of Indians.

I however do not also agree with Persaud that power-sharing is an extra- electoral concept.

In fact, if you read the PNCR's position on power-sharing, they want the proportion of seats in the executive to be based on the proportion of the votes that the respective participating parties receive at the polls.

Thus the PNCR is willing to be part of a government that could be dominated by the PPP.

The PNCR is willing to sit and share power with the very party that it says had links with death squads that murdered people, the very party that is described by them as being corrupt and inept.

So, if anyone thinks that the Working People's Alliance is in bad shape, they had better take a look at the main opposition.

I cannot understand for what conceivable reason the PNCR would still embrace the power- sharing proposals which will see them sitting at the feet of the PPP.

You have to feel sorry for someone who has a doctorate, yet finds himself unable to assemble even the simplest of defenses. This is the case of Dr. Randy Persaud who wrote a long missive replying to the Peeper, when much of what he wrote is trite and lacking in the standards of thoroughness that one expects from someone so eminently qualified.

Readers will recall that this Dr. Randy Persaud had accused the Working People's Alliance of advocating violence against Indians. The premise upon which his argument was based was however false, as was explained by the Peeper, and his entire argument collapsed.

What was this premise? The premise was firstly that Walter Rodney had called for violence to overthrow the Burnham dictatorship and that the Working People's Alliance has repeated history by calling for violence to remove the PPP government. These are dangerous arguments being pedalled by Randy Persaud.

Intellectuals or academics who wish to enter into enlightened debate have to ensure that they are not loose in their interpretation of facts. Secondly, especially for those who are unfamiliar with political developments in Guyana — never mind how many persons they may have interviewed — their first duty is to ensure that they acquaint themselves with those aspects of history and political developments that they would have missed while distant from the phenomenon being studied. I think there is a lot more interviewing and a lot more reading for Dr. Randy to do.

Why do I say so? Well, firstly as I mentioned, Rodney did not rule out violence as a possible and eventual means of removing the Burnham dictatorship. But to say that his call for the removal of Burnham “by any means necessary” is a call to violence glosses over the whole development of the civil rebellion process. This cannot be a call per se to violence, even though theoretically it opens the possibility of a violent overthrow.

Secondly, David Hinds has not called for Africans to take up arms against the government. In fact in the midst of the Buxton criminal uprising of 2001- 2003, Hinds, Andaiye and Kwayana were some of the voices of reason, opposing the christening of murder, rape and robbery as a resistance struggle. Andaiye went so far as to say that any such struggle on behalf of Africans should not be done in her name.

Randy claims to have listed evidence to support his arguments, but I will restrain myself from embarrassing him further because nothing that he says, not even in the theatre of the absurd, can be used to support his thesis that the Working People's Alliance is calling for the armed removal of the PPP government.

All that David Hinds has been advocating is that if a government, widely perceived to represent Indian interests, is unwilling or resistant to meet the demands of another grouping within society, then it may force that grouping to opt for other measures. All this says is what is likely to happen should one group that feels that it is being dominated sees not the possibility of its concerns being addressed. This is not advocacy; it is analysis, bringing to the attention of the ruling elite the risks that it runs by ignoring certain things.

Hinds in fact has made it clear that he does not believe that Guyana has reached that stage where armed struggle can be justified. Kwayana had also insisted that there were non-violent means open for redress by those in Buxton. How therefore can Hinds be accused of advocating violence, when in fact he is on record as saying that Guyana has not reached that stage where violence can be justified?

The issue in Guyana is not whether the PPP acts in the interest of all Guyanese and whether marginalisation of Africans is a myth. The issue, as I have repeatedly stated in these columns, is that one group feels that the present political system permanently locks them out of political power, and no amount of gerrymandering by the PPP and their supporters, no amount of ethnic window-dressing, such as having a Black Prime Ministerial Candidate in a party overwhelmingly supported by Indians, will transform the reality of what the PPP is perceived to be. They are seen as drawing the bulk of their support from Indians, and therefore Africans do not feel that the PPP can genuinely promote the interests of their community.

This does not mean that the PPP has not and cannot address African marginalisation. They can and have but, because they are perceived by Africans as an Indian party, there remains a vacuum within the political space. And the question to be resolved is how can the PPP make the African community feel that it can act on their behalf.

The PPP's defense is like that of the PNCR. They do not feel that they are an ethnic party. Instead they say they are a nationalist party. But let us be serious.

The voting patterns clearly illustrate that while they may be more nationalist than their main rival, the overwhelming majority of the PPP votes, like that of the PNCR, comes from a specific community.

There are two major contradictions taking place in Guyanese politics at present. The first is concerned with the politics of the main opposition PNCR while the second has to do with the difficult position that the Working Peoples Alliance (WPA) finds itself in trying to identify a role for itself in local politics.

While the support base of the main opposition remains solid, the party itself has become weakened leading to the sort of postures that we are witnessing today.

The PNCR, while assured that it will still be able to command the second largest block of votes in this country, is seemingly not ready to go to the polls, because at the level of the party, it is not in a state of readiness to contest the elections.

The reason for this seeming reluctance to contest the elections is not because it cannot command a following which would allow it to retain the position of the main opposition party, but because it has lost the will to contest elections at the level of its party. This has led to irreversible consequences for the PNCR. It is so set in complaining about the arrangements for the forthcoming polls that, even if all its demands are met, it will find it extremely difficult to place itself in a mental state of readiness to offer a credible challenge to the ruling PPP/C. Can anyone imagine what it would take for the PNCR to, at this stage, mount an effective campaign for political office? Can anyone imagine the effort that it will take to put its election machinery in gear three months before elections are likely to be held?

The PNCR, as an opposition party, should have long ago been doing the things that Bharrat Jagdeo is doing. It should have been taking to the streets and villages in order to woo support. Even in those areas where it has traditionally enjoyed a strong following, the party needs to buckle down to serious grassroots political work so as to place its supporters in a state of readiness.

Right now the rank and file members of the PNCR, I suspect, are in state of confusion not knowing whether or not their party is serious about contesting elections and not knowing exactly whether, therefore, they need to begin to do the things that are needed to run an effective campaign. It cannot be that the problem is finance. The PNCR has never been short of money. It still holds significant physical assets which it can always leverage to raise capital. But even outside of this, the party has always been believed to have been able to raise funds both locally and internationally to fund its election campaign.

It is also still not clear with just over three months to elections whether or not the PNCR will be entering the election under a Big Tent or Grand Alliance formula. As I see it, there are certain small and insignificant parties that can readily join the PNCR ticket. Unfortunately, these parties will do more harm than good since, while they may enhance the party's image, they will take away from the party's strength which involves the ability to mobilise its traditional support base. The smaller parties will not bring any significant votes to the PNCR and, therefore, it needs to be weighed just what value any alliance with such parties would have to the fortunes of the PNCR.

While the WPA looks as if it is being pulled along by the present currents and seems to be heading into an electoral alliance with the PNCR, I do not think that this will materialise. I do not believe that the WPA will contest the elections. I believe it will be too big a decision, one that has historical implications, if that party should join in an alliance with the main opposition.

The WPA, I do not believe, is ready to make that leap at the moment. And therefore, I think it sees itself as an arbiter in the political tug-of-war between the PNCR and the PPP. The problem is that it is not playing this role because it has been so caught up with the nonsensical campaign for house-to-house verification that it has lost any credibility it may have possessed in influencing the ruling party to take a more conciliatory stand.

The best role that the WPA can salvage at this stage is to try to ensure that there is greater public confidence in the election machinery.

Unfortunately, even here it finds itself in a paradox since it has been the one that has been most vocal in calling for street protests when it should have been the party that should have been making the rounds seeking to offer compromises to the present impasse.

Having locked itself into the position that it supports house-to-house verification because it believes that only persons resident in Guyana should be allowed to vote, it will find it difficult to extricate itself from the tangle it finds itself in, and thereby be unable to play an effective role in resolving the present problems.