Dear Editor,
Mr Vishnu Bisram, true to form, could not resist a petulant dig at the candidate that defeated his predicted choice for the democratic presidential nomination (‘Obama needs the Clintons’ backing to win the presidency,’ KN 30.8.08). And nothing is more evident of this effort and predisposition than his summation of Obama’s speech: “He touched a lot of emotions and received fulsome praises from Guyanese I spoke with. But I believe he made some errors, which the Republicans will pick up on and go after him.” In case you are wondering what is true to form, it is Mr Bisram’s pattern of making a dig at someone or about something without providing any evidence or elaboration to supplement it.
As an analyst examining the Democratic drive for the presidency, Mr Bisram’s piece is vacuous. The dependency relationship between the Obama camp and the Clinton camp is not as one-sided as he implies. It is a symbiotic dependency: As much as Obama needs the support of the Clintons during this last lap of his presidential run, Hillary Clinton’s political aspirations, going forward, are no less dependent on not alienating those won over or inspired by the Obama candidacy.
So the allusion that the Clintons are doing the “right thing” merely because it is the right thing to do, is typical of the kind of opinion-shaping that Bisram is wont to indulge in. It is a tired and worn gambit that would be laughed off the pages of periodicals in the US, but delivered to Guyanese at home under the assumption that they are not sophisticated or worldly enough to see through it.
One has to wonder at this disingenuous gambit to rationalize the bitter and sour grapes attitudes of a small contingent of Hillary Clinton supporters, whom she now has to persuade to support Obama rather than John McCain. These people, who call themselves ‘Pumas,’ (an acronym for “Party unity my a$$”), are clearly more concerned about personalities, maybe race, than they are about the interest of Democratic party values, or the Americans Hilary Clinton ostensibly got into the race to help. The political and social positions of Clinton and Obama are almost 100% symmetrical. For her supporters to even consider supporting John McCain, who is tied to a Republican platform diametrically opposed to everything she stands for and campaigned on, rather than automatically throwing their support behind Barack Obama, suggest that the emotions and impulses that are driving them are antithetical to the inclusive values on which the Democratic Party prides itself.
And no amount of convenient white-washing by Mr Bisram can obscure these worrying aspects of remnants from a political past Democrats thought had long become extinct.
When something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, there is every reason to believe that it is a duck.. Guyanese need to shoot down this duck that Bisram has flying out there, and treat themselves to some curry.
Yours faithfully,
Robin Williams
