Dear Editor,
Annan Boodram’s’ letter of December 31 in Stabroek News critiques and calls for an end to the “us” versus “them” mentality. I have more direct interest in one specific area of his letter, namely his comment that “WPA was a one man show” and that the WPA “flailed, floundered, and flapped” after Rodney was taken out if the “equation.” Mr Boodram has absolutely every right to critique the WPA’s performance over time as a political actor. But there are elements to his comments that are politically and historically inaccurate. He restricts Rodney’s appeal to rhetoric, the novelty factor, an opportunity to express frustrations without being targets, and so on. This is fair comment on an individual’s impact on society and although I fully disagree with the restrictions he places on Rodney’s impact, this line of argument is not equally extended in his discussion on Cheddi Jagan in the same letter. Mr Boodram, in his focus on Rodney’s political role through WPA, appears drawn to the single leader concept of political and historical change and this leads to misconceptions about the WPA’s origins, phases of struggle and the role of Rodney himself. Much more detail can be provided but first of all, Rodney, in spite of his stellar impact in the period 1974 (the year of WPA’s founding) to 1980 did not by himself launch or lead the WPA. Other political figures like Eusi Kwayana, Moses Bhagwan, Brindley Benn, Bonita Harris, Josh Ramsammy, Tacuma Ogunseye, Clive Thomas, Ngozi Moses, Sase Omo, were active in the WPA’s founding moment. In point of fact, folks like Andaiye, Walter Rodney and Rupert Roopnaraine and others joined later as “independents.” In other words the philosophy and tenets of the WPA were in gestation at the moment of Rodney’s welcome arrival into the ranks. Moreover, Mr Boodram’s assessment of “leader” Rodney is a prearranged packaging of a leading figure’s role in society with Boodram’s own selfish expectations. Rodney was a different political responder than Cheddi Jagan and others named by Boodram. Rodney embodied the concept of “groundings” and Mr Boodram must be aware of Rodney’s “groundings” throughout the Caribbean and in Africa. At the Guyanese political level there are several active criteria that Rodney’s type of new politics: the promotion of scholarship that was not only qualitative, but “relevant” to active life; and an iconoclastic tearing down of the shibboleths in academic and political and social life including the very radical position, that Rodney as an African Guyanese, took to defend Arnold Rampersaud, a PPP activist on trial for murder in the 1970s. Also let us not forget Rodney’s role as public teacher: there were free classes (classes and lectures without fees for the oppressed) and the classroom could be any in form – from rickety bottom house chairs to holding classes atop a big rock in a yard or on a hill. I could go on, there is much more that embodied Rodney but it was certainly not what Boodram restricts him to.
Secondly, it is highly inaccurate to suggest that the WPA floundered or collapsed after Rodney’s assassination in 1980. This view is understandable in one sense because the record of WPA activity between 1980 and 1992 is insufficiently recorded and there is always a tendency in discussion of the broad opposition in the period, to ignore or downplay the veritable siege conditions the WPA, unlike the PPP as the formal, parliamentary opposition, had to endure. The fact is that the WPA grew strikingly in terms of grassroots work in African, Indian and Amerindian communities after 1980, and held an impressive multi-racial membership from Georgetown extending all the way to the Corentyne, and Amerindian communities in the interior. It produced and distributed two newspapers, Dayclean and Open Word in difficult conditions in scores of communities throughout the country. It endured severe repression, it held demonstrations, marches, pickets, vigils, hunger strikes and numerous other acts of resistance.
Its activist political presence extended to international attachments to associations like the Socialist Internation-al, and it had support groups in the Caribbean, North America and Europe. If this is not activity after Rodney’s assassination, what is? Indeed the repression felt by the WPA enabled and facilitated, as Mr Frederick Kissoon and others frequently point out, the PPP’s ability to literally come out from its uncreative, fossilised opposition cold. In 1977 or 1978, the PPP finally agreed to renounce ‘winner takes all’ politics and the WPA worked with the PPP with great difficulty at times, all the way to 1992. Lamentably, the fantasy of civic aside, ‘winner takes all’ remains fundamental to the core philosophy of the party that runs the state today. It was in great measure the WPA’s opening up of the society across race and class lines that allowed the PPP to benefit from the largesse of good will that led straight to the engagement of international institutions like the Carter Center.
So much was done by the WPA to assist with alliances against the PNC state that contemporary critics often, understandably given the nature of the current PPP administration, complain in this way, among many others: ‘Dis wuh yuh all fight de PNC fuh?’ The WPA’s answer should be, and daily columnist Kissoon and spokespersons of WPA and letter writers hold the general correct response: the WPA was right to fight the PNC authoritarian state then and equally right to fight the PPP elected dictatorship now. As numerous critics of the present government have explained, very, very little fundamental change has occurred from then to now, and there are things that are much worse under the current PPP administration.
But back to Mr Boodram’s points. He implies that the huge crowds encountered by Rodney and the WPA did not translate into “electoral” success.
If Mr Boodram had studied the period carefully he would note that electoral ambition was very far from Rodney or the WPA’s radar. In fact it was only in 1985, five years after Rodney’s assassination that the WPA seriously contested an election after much internal debate, that is, the December 1985 elections.
The official results in the rigged poll gave the WPA one parliamentary seat which was occupied by Eusi Kwayana. Perhaps if the results were fair the WPA might have had a more significant share of the vote. Indeed President Desmond Hoyte made a significant statement after the election. He said, “WPA must be contained.” Logic suggests that one does not “contain” something that has “floundered and flapped.”
Perhaps Mr Boodram’s consideration of WPA floundering has to do with the party’s condition after 1992. In this he is on much firmer ground, but not for the reasons he implies.
It is patently obvious that the WPA suffered immeasurably in de facto marginalisation after 1992 after a failed alliance policy, and the complete disregard with which the new government dealt with an organisation that gave so much to the struggle. The WPA is not an organisation that runs from open debate about its failures, having been cut from the cloth of the new political culture ensconced in its founding. Debate goes on about its role and there is much more to be said. But it had a frail and failed alliance with the PPP for free and fair elections, and the fact that some in the society lament this support in this political period is a reasonable reaction.
Finally, I note Mr Boodram’s final new year wish was extended to his “Guyanese brethren everywhere.” Apparently Guyana’s sistren find no place in either Boodram’s “us” or “them.”
Yours faithfully,
Nigel Westmaas
