Dear Editor,
On Saturday Sept 4th I attended a meeting sponsored by an outfit called GT Progressive Caucus in Brooklyn. Lots of big names were supposed to attend according to the advertisement – but I only saw Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine who flew in from Guyana for the conference and Dr. Ivelaw Griffith, provost of York College in Queens, New York.
No Show: Dr. David Hinds, Halim Majeed. Not advertised but present were Kenneth Persaud, Sasenarine Singh, Vishnu Dutt, Dennis Wiggins, Moses Bhagwan; Zamal Sankar and Rohit Kanhai of the weekly Caribbean Daylight.
There can be no doubt that Dr. Griffith is a most noted, pre-eminent scholar on drugs and security issues. A transcript of his lecture should be prepared and published. He told us that Interpol’s arrest warrant for Desi Bouterse (now President Bouterse of Suriname) is in effect null and void. When a convicted person is freely elected to the presidency by the people of a sovereign state, such an event supersedes an Interpol’s warrant and must be respected.
The ongoing trial of Bouterse on drug and murder charges in Suriname will also be suspended and may never take place. Dr. Griffith also spoke at length about the unresolved territorial border claims by Suriname and Venezuela – and called on presidential candidates running for office to bone-up on these issues. He also spoke at length on all the various ramifications of illegal drugs and how it unravels the social fabric of any society where the govt. turns a blind eye to the problem.
At the intermission I told Dr. Roopnaraine I was sort of disappointed because I thought the conference would stick to the advertised theme: Deciphering a way forward for the 2011 Elections, and he said he would speak on that topic. When he came to the podium, he spoke on how Guyana became a state of ethnic parties and ethnic voting. He started at the beginning of 1953 and walked you through every major event leading up to the election of the PPP govt. in 1992.
His lecture was very academic and very objective (even Burnham and Hoyte could not find fault with it). Roopnaraine combines academic detail and reasoning with passion and intensity befitting Guyanese public meetings. I have no doubt that this man is a living embodiment of Mark Antony’s magic and passion, capable of firing-up a Parade Ground crowd of 20,000 and sending them out to seek instant justice for any political wrongs done to the nation. This is the man who struggled alongside Walter Rodney and scaled fences to escape the truncheons of Burnham’s goon squads in the late 1970s. This is the first time I saw him up-close, and I was every bit thrilled – he is a living legend.
Somewhere between the planning of the agenda and the staging of the conference, the sponsors lost their way. It was on anything except on what it billed itself as, namely, “deciphering a way forward”, referring to the current impasse in the process of organizing a so-called “people’s partnership” (a combined opposition) to contest the 2011 elections against the ruling PPP govt.
Will there be or will there not be a People’s Partnership? The AFC, the only party with significant and proven support (it currently holds five seats in the parliament) has said categorically it will not form a partnership with the PNC under the leadership of Robert Corbin, but will (or maybe) under a new leader. It was a wise decision on the part of the AFC. To combine with Corbin’s PNC would have been its death knell. (“AFC in a pickle”, wrote Randy Persaud. PPP waiting in the wings to paint the AFC as a clone of the PNC). You see, the Indian people in every election since 1992 vote their fears of the PNC which ran a tyrannical dictatorship for 28-years. A re-invented, genuinely multiracial PNC as a component in a partnership, however, stands a very good chance of winning 5-10 percent of the liberal Indian vote.
Why is this issue so important? Well, there is absolutely no chance of defeating the PPP unless there is a people’s partnership. And, this is because of the so-called Burnhamite clause in the Constitution that grants the presidency to the party with the plurality of votes, in the event that party falls below 50 percent. With the PNC and AFC contesting separately, it is a guarantee that the PPP will hold on to the presidency and the govt.
I met Mr. Corbin in his office at his party headquarters on August 24th to basically make an argument and a plea for him to turn over the reins of leadership to another leader. Mr. Corbin told me he vaguely recalls my name from the letter’s columns of the independent press – but doesn’t recall what I write about. I told him I am the guy who has been calling for the PNC and PPP to elect an Indian- and African-Guyanese, respectively to head their parties, since the 2001 elections.
My argument repeated over and over in the letter’s columns is that Guyana’s democracy is very flawed if “every last man votes race” – and the only way to reduce the excessively high levels of racial voting is for both the PPP and PNC to transform themselves into genuine multi-racial parties by having a leader from outside their traditional ethnic-support base.
Mr. Corbin listened to my argument, and said he had announced publicly he would not be the candidate. Wow! I thought, this is a remarkable statement. Then what?
The way is open for the PNC to call a special congress to elect a new leader – and for Mr. Corbin to help unite the party behind a new leader. Wrong! Mr. Corbin began a whole train of shenanigans; his cronies writing “rule of law” letters in the press, arguing that Mr. Corbin won the elections last year. These same elections have been ridiculed as fraudulent. Large numbers of voters were made members just for that one-time voting. Dr. Van West Charles compiled a report documenting the fraud – and said, had the elections been clean, another leader, Winston Murray would have been elected.
To make a long story short: Where in the civilized and democratic world, would you find a national party leader who says he is not running for the presidency but still insists on being the leader of the party. Only in Guyana, party leaders once elected, believe the office has become an entitlement – until death.
This week’s Caribbean Daylight (NY weekly) lead story: “Murray best candidate to lead PNCR – Van West Charles” reports on the party’s internal struggle to resolve the leader’s issue, without which there can be no moving forward of the process to organize a “People’s Partnership”.
Van West Charles who had lived abroad for a number of years – and brought back with him new ideas and values of democracy – is the quintessential, indefatigable fighter for important nationalist causes. Will he succeed?
Yours faithfully,
Mike Persaud
New York