Upon re-reading Mr Ramkarran’s previous letter in response to David Hinds I have to also agree that its objective was to establish the lessons in a certain narrative important to the history of the country. Namely that the PPP has made efforts in the past at something more than “inclusiveness,” in fact, at “power sharing.” We have to agree that the party in which Drs Hinds and Thomas were leaders and militants, the WPA, already enfeebled at the time of the 1992 elections, was offered a wonderful chance to include itself in the government. All objective records indicate that the WPA placed demands on the process which were unacceptable to the PPP and by this action, eliminated itself.
I have stated before that Mr Ramkarran is correct in minimising the importance of the exact dates or sequence of some events. The point is that the PPP has on several occasions, as detailed here some years ago by Clement Rohee, gone beyond vague overtures and made concrete proposals for governments in the national interest. In this way, everything we are still talking about – power sharing, racial reconciliation etc – was analysed and discussed by each of the major parties at some time in the past.
In the recent present President Jagdeo made an important speech about national unity and had indicated that more efforts would be made by his group. It was played on the front page of the Chronicle but quickly eclipsed by Mrs Jagan’s death then the CLICO scandal. I believed Mr Jagdeo as I am convinced that the PPP, now that the banditry and out-of-control marching is over, will inevitably revert to its fundamental tendency to promote the social peace. Or to appear to do so for reasons that we may wish to consider at another time. The point at which this tendency becomes dominant, in whatever form it takes, I believe, depends not only on objective conditions but on the will of men such as Mr Jagdeo and Mr Ramkarran himself or Moses Nagamootoo and the many other leaders and members of the PPP whom I know to desire a reduction of the intensity of racial antagonism.
I am equally convinced that the party would be unable to sell the idea to their communal supporters, as they have clearly said in the past, if those supporters consider themselves, rightly or wrongly, still subject to one form or another of PNC directed/ supported aggression.
Having corrected, I hope, one impression left by my last letter, I am now free to clarify another of its points. Contrary to the impression that it may have left, I am not “pretending” at neutrality when it comes to the damage that almost all players on the political field have done. I am stating that I genuinely consider myself liberated from the need to play advocate for either side – PNC or PPP. Or for the WPA. And this for the reason that no side has done only harm. Both PNC and PPP have done much good and Dr Jagan has got to be recognised for what he is. A major historical figure and a national hero. But a man who may have wanted to do much more than circumstancs allowed him and who, in my estimation, was finally sucked in and overwhelmed by the racial narrative that many in his party both ingurgitated and spewed out. A great humanist shrunken to the proportions of a racial leader both by the force of our prejudices and false consciousness and his own weaknesses or sentimentality.
What is irritating as the history is reviewed and the archives consulted, is the consistency with which the PPP writers stick to the requirements of the corrosive meta-narrative that occupies the imagination of some of their supporters.
Those supporters believe that no good was ever or can ever be done by the PNC and its supporters. And the bad that is done by the PPP and its supporters is rationalised, explained away. It is the existence of this cramped conceptualisation of things that has led to the tiring ditty of the “twenty-eight years,” the fantasies about the flour and dhal ban, the stories about having to flee to refugee status in Canada because of a systematic discrimination on the part of the PNC. And all of the other fake facts that aliment that hatred and contempt behind the triumphalism.
It is the equivalent of certain activists accusing the PPP of killing young black men as they ignore the fact that the PNC killed more. Or talking about Roger Khan, or Rabbi Washington his PNC era equivalent, while ignoring the apparent web of criminal complicities that have always marked our society.
On the question of the PNC apology the question that arises is what would the benchmark date be. Then as a subsidiary, whether the PPP is also willing to bare its soul before us. If the date is to be set at December 31 2008, for example, and we review the errors of all sorts committed by the PPP and minimised by its supporters and members, we get an idea of the difficulties facing PNC people when it comes to that party’s own guilt. It may be said that in admitting that mistakes have been made, both PPP and PNC leaders have so far shown some maturity and honesty. What both groups have failed to show however is a convincing and comprehensive list.
Neither group would provide us, I am sure, with an acceptable list.
Having said how I see things I wish to again submit that, finally, any true telling of the history by PPP or PNC activists would have to admit that Dr Jagan seems, from his philosophical position, much more active as a proponent of national reconciliation. But in practical terms the propaganda and the praxis have always run counter to this philosophical attachment to racial peace.
As I have written here before, perhaps by now Cheddi would have gone much further down that road and he had the authority to lead his people there if he wished. Those who knew him well may testify or deny. But it is also to be noted that when the philosophy gave way to the praxis Dr Jagan seemed, as a collectivity, and by that I mean as a political being with a retinue of followers, to have done little to change the grand narrative driven over the years by PPP, Dan Debidin’s Apaan Jhat slogan, Balram Singh Rai’s Hindu communitarianism, and all the other currents, including the frank racism, alive in his segment of society. That the PPP became the field of energy into which all those tendencies were poured and were so little modified by the egalitarian communism, is also clear. The PPP has got, like the PNC, to do some internal cleansing as it calls for apology and repentance in other quarters.
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
