Dear Editor,
For a reason I find it hard to define, the coming elections appear as crucial as any we have experienced since independence.
It may be a case of the alignment of forces that enter the contest- a PPP with a fresh candidate facing the polls, and for the first time elections in the absence of any of the Jagan founders; a PNC obviously renewed and perhaps re-wired in a hyper-democratic mode; an AFC, still the only significant third force, presenting a candidate sure to appeal to many. But it may also be a case where the shrinkage of the Indo-Guyanese bloc, now reduced to perhaps forty percent, has so changed the alignment of forces that interesting probabilities present themselves. There is, from a certain point of view, the real possibility that the PPP could lose office.
If it does so, we bear in mind, it still may be assured participation in the successor government within the “shared” model to which its major opponent is sworn.
If it so chooses. In fact then, these elections may possibly be more about a possible reduced role for the PPP than it is about that party’s disappearance from government.
But while all of this may appear new and promising, the political parties have mostly “stayed on message.”
Judging from the events that the media recently offered to report, the PPP has pulled out the well-worn anti-PNC scrapbook with the familiar slogans, it has armed and expanded its battalion of phantom-writers, made up a propaganda hit list featuring the usual suspects (Chris Ram, Freddie, Bulkan, Benschop etc. and now Glen Lall and Hubert Wong- to which it has added the renegades now fighting for the AFC (Sasenarine Singh, Tarron Khemraj…) As expected the party launches the personal counter-attacks even as it takes the reflex evasive action with respect to serious allegations against itself.
Dr Luncheon is now deployed in full-power mode, Charles Ramson takes time off from his busy schedule to write a lawyer’s letter to the press, and Rohee responds to a “refugee board” accusation of cyber-crime. Prem/ Kwame have been confined, we imagine, another serious and sensitive mission. And it is with the usual mixture of solemnity and anticipation that the party’s election machinery hits the campaign trail. While all of this is happening a serious “outreach programme” features candidate and sponsor garlanded with a necklace of flowers (the PPP signature photo) popping up here and there to show caring, give comfort and offer hope to the faithful huddled in fear of a re-loaded PNC returning with all they have been taught to hate.
No occasion would be lost, one would have hoped, to slip in a word educating followers about Hegelian phenomenology or the triadic processes of Marxian dialectics. Alas! Marxism/Leninism remains locked in the coffers of the party’s constitution and the old odor of race politics floats like fresh spoor in the trail of the electioneering pilgrims. There seems to be, as a positive feature, a seizing of the occasion to preach against some of the many irritants we all suffer.
Alcoholism, congenital or acquired dotishness, naysaying, PNCitis etc. For the President has thrown himself with relish into the fray and has attacked not only the obvious public targets named above, he seems to have really developed a liking for this aspect of presidenthood. To the point that he has even created his own category of target- the malicious “old men”- for whom he seems to bear a special animus.
Perhaps they just turn him off. Or perhaps Ian McDonald is right, there is nothing redeeming about the condition anyway.
Mr. Jagdeo’s efforts at cleaning up the place of rum-shop regulars is said to be bearing fruit. With measurable resonance as far away as Richmond Hill and Toronto. Clifford Reis and Yesu Persaud’s fall off in business will doubtless be gleefully analysed by Ram in a future column with a finger pointed at the origin of the shock. We know on which podium the drop-off in business was launched. Old Men, a commodity of which the PPP has never been short, must have been sleeping the sleep of the guilty in recent times, and are expected to start submitting their resignations any time soon. Naysayers and the incompetent, who collectively appear to us as most recalcitrant, have a choice between drowning their feeble lights in drink or hanging in there until they join the ranks of the “old”, and qualify for wearing, like a panel of military medals on their chests, all the labels Jagdeo detests, becoming old, drunk, incompetent etc all at once…
The PNC, on the other side, seems by comparison to have lost the initiative in terms of commanding media attention. It could have at the very minimum set about seducing the crossover rum shop vote, at least 70 000 strong and understandably enraged by the President’s rampage. One would have thought that the party, with its networks of kith and kin at all levels of the public service and armed forces, would have already started to spend time splashing the media with its collected intelligence on scandal after scandal at OP. Whatever the “P” is said to mean. Would have worked up the energy to get New Nation back on the road and re-acquired Adam Harris and Fenty, would have sought the publicity of a series of court actions against the government, would have thought up something spectacular to disrupt what Burnham once described as “the even tenor of our mediocrity.” All the while of course, studiously abstaining from appearing threatening to Indians unless, of course, the effect was intended.
The act of appearing menacing as such, has again fallen to the willing hands of
Tacuma Ogunseye, stuck in the old WPA mode of “change by any means necessary” reminiscent of the anti- PNC days. Tacuma, threatening post-election unrest, arises like a windfall for the PPP campaign managers, giving impetus and work to the Chronicle phantoms, finding himself cast as the latest scarecrow the PPP still needs, and is swiftly thrown as a morsel for the illegally idle ERC to get its teeth into. Post election violence? The water cannon is already on its way, if not already imported and stored in an abandoned rice-combine barn somewhere deep in the country side. Tacuma’s African Freedom Fighters showed their true mettle and obsolescence of tactics and arms the last time round. Their sole political usefulness at this time seems to be to scare PPPites back behind the barricades.
The AFC has tried, in all this, with its own shock troops of former ROARites and ex-PPP propaganda commandoes, to maintain a certain dignity. It limits its comments to serious economic and political questions, and may be busier composing another questionable voter -intention poll. It has personally attacked no one as far as I can remember and seems to spend its time plotting to win the illusionary Indian crossover vote. The Indian crossover vote, in reality a sort of urban legend, will remain elusive.
While all of this is happening at this state of the play, spirits of another sort have taken up space in the cyber universe to spread knowledge, perception, rumour, innuendo and defa-mation. There are numerous sites and discussion boards specialising in our politics. Mostly inhabited by the same small and mobile bands who like this sort of thing. From interesting historical or economic analysis on one or two, one may descend to the blogspots that accuse so-and-so of “liking young t’ing” or the other featuring a photo of a man who earns a meagre $1500 every time he gets same-sexed by a name we all know. Or whose daughter is ugly or into porno stardom etc. No holds are barred. The whole range of the Guyanese rum shop sensibility is expressed (or celebrated) on these sites running their own campaigns in a parallel world with its own truths and lies.
By this time, it should have been clear to all of us who agonise over the possible election results, that most of this, the speeches, the campaigning, the garlands of flowers, the PNC and the AFC, the JOPP, Peter Ramsaroop and Keith Scott… is just epiphenomenal..entertainment. The die is cast. Crucial as the coming elections may appear, there is the real possibility that the PPP will be returned. The stark and concrete reality of the census may condemn us to a generation or two of the same to which we have just never grown accustomed. Perhaps by the time all this changes we would have been firmly fixed, like the current Mr. Jagdeo himself, in his class of “old men.” Muttering about the days when plantain was 25 cents a pound and a gallon of rice cost less than a dollar. And the nation’s population was double what it is as we look around us at the empty ruins of the city.. The few young, mostly convicted deportees from colder climes, all of mixed race it appears, hang about in little clots in the shade of rotting buildings and hurl a curse as a multi-billionaire politician sweeps past in his motorcade. The young look down upon us as we looked at grandpa when he, in his time, fell into muttered reminiscence…
They wheel us off.
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
