Mr Frederick Kissoon’s comment reflects the self-destructive, old-fashioned school of political thinking that is harmful for political discourse (‘Some of the new blood is worse than the old,’ SN July 20.) He said: “If Mr Rampertab says he belongs to the generation of the eighties, then I didn’t see him around when that generation had joined the world in fighting for democracy.”
Obviously, he’s implying that I was not (likely) “fighting for democracy” in the eighties and therefore have no right to call for those who allegedly did fight, to make room for new writers and thinkers today. It is indicative of the old school of political thinking, to reach into the personal when it has no bearing on the issue at hand, and is clearly not political discourse.
Whether I fought for democracy 25 years ago or not, is irrelevant to the need for new writers and thinkers in Guyana. I belong to the eighties generation, and this means that I came of age then and there; I was a teen and student. Like others, my job was to attend and remain in school.
Under a new school of political thinking, the people who suffered the most for democracy were always those people from whom it was taken in the first place. One need not hold a picket to protest, and the oldest and most enduring form of political protest is where ordinary folks simply say: No.
Under this new school of political thinking, each time I stayed awake to watch for bandits, or lined up for transportation after school (while the children of PNC officials were being chauffeured), I was fighting for democracy, saying ‘No’ to tyranny. Each time my family bought Stabroek News (which was about every day it was published) in the late eighties, I was fighting for democracy by keeping the paper alive.
One hopes that others can see the difference in the old way and the new way of political discourse here. Under the new way, I have certain beliefs. I believe that there is no extra plot in the earth or paragraph in a newspaper for picket-holders, and that those who imagine such do so out of great disillusionment.
I believe that social protest and independent political thought existed in Guyana at least 100 years before the birth of our modern political parties, and that the heroic contributions of all categories of citizens ought to be celebrated, and not just that of the political class.
Under the new way, I believe that the highest public tribute was paid when we entrusted to the political class, the welfare of the people. I believe it is selfish of them to cry foul as their work, collectively, is criticized for having failed to create a viable, sustained democratic culture in Guyana. Not one party has been singled out, but all 3 of the old parties.
Under the new way, to abort the failed manners of political discourse of these individuals is not to disrespect their valiant contributions; rather, it is to improve on their legacy and to hopefully revive political discourse to help achieve meaningful representational leadership.
To prove how political discourse needs to be revived, it is instructive to turn, briefly, to the work of our foremost political analyst, Mr Kissoon. He has been an outstanding critic of the Jagdeo regime. That said, his writing is often (and regrettably so), shorthanded. Let us revisit the critical election of 2006. His analysis was seriously flawed and may be reduced to one phrase: Indians voted race. It failed to examine, for example, the role played by the security forces’ raids and moderate Indians being pushed to vote for the PPP, resulting in unexpected seats in parliament.
He did not examine the pivotal role of GIHA/ROAR and other Indians who worked to get Indians to move away from race voting. Instead, his analysis was transformed into an outright assault on the supporters of the PPP, in which people were flayed repeatedly as voting race simply because they exercised their franchise.
There is so much more that can be said, but hopefully one gets the picture that clearly, political discourse as we know it to be, GT style, is not helping but harming the interest of the people.
Yours faithfully,
Rakesh Rampertab
