“I mean, since David Granger opposed Nagamootoo because, ipso facto, the defecting may very well be a ‘spy job’ in the making, then what exempts Trotman from that kind of suspicion (from the rest of the lot)? Mr. Nagamootoo, what principle are you talking about? You and Trotman are in the same cesspool. By way of further explanation, if this is the qualifying principle David Granger is using (former connection), then Moses Nagamootoo has failed his people. He was bullied into supporting APNU’s racist agenda of putting a ‘black man’ in the chairs of Speaker and Deputy Speaker. So in Nagamootoo’s case, he is not only a traitor (PPP) but a chicken (APNU).” (Baldeo Mathura: “Nagamootoo’s Contretemps:” Guyana Chronicle: 18/01/12)
What initially attracted me to Mr. Mathura’s letter was his suggestion that when persons claim that they are acting according to principle one is never sure what they mean, and this concern will be the basis of another article. However, a few paragraphs in, I was struck by the penultimate sentence of the above quote. The Jagdeo 2011campaign may have been crude, but I have no recollection of it descending to the level of racial vulgarity portrayed above!
My first reaction was to ignore the letter, but on reflection, four factors suggested that I should not. Firstly, the letter was published in the Guyana Chronicle, which is well known as a purveyor of the PPP/government’s viewpoint, and it therefore suggests the kind of a discourse that may be taking place at some levels in the PPP/C.
Secondly, the capacity/incapacity of GECOM aside, it goes without saying that in our present political situation all political parties need to be prepared for general elections at almost any time and some in the PPP/C are still suffering from defeat shock syndrome: a psychological condition that tends to afflict individuals or groups who had come to believe in their own invincibility.
These people would relish another quick bite at the cherry in the hope that a PPP/C victory would absolve them, and they see deadlock in the budget debate as providing just such an opportunity.
Thirdly, we know that some in the PPP/C believe that APNU’s election success resulted from its capacity to further racialise its African base and thus win back most of those who had supported the AFC in 2006. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: why should the PPP/C not make such an approach part of its future electoral strategy, with the likes of Mr. Mathura taking the lead?
Finally, it may be a coincidence, but the statement appeared the day after senior members of the PPP at a Freedom House press conference said that the party had analysed its election performance and identified some of its shortcomings and a possible way forward.
Bi-communal societies are inherently politically racist and it takes only the smallest apparently discriminatory activity against any group for that group to be mobilised in its defence. As others and I have shown, the PPP/C rule has provided more than adequate grounds for a successful Afro-Guyanese mobilisation.
The PPP/C cannot then bury its head in the sand: although it would always have been an uphill task for it to prevent a determined effort at African mobilisation in our context, it made a significant contribution to the success of that project. In attempting to replicate this perceived APNU strategy, the PPP/C has to face the fact that APNU is in no position to create a discriminatory backdrop for which it could be easily blamed.
All the palaver about the speakership being stolen from the PPP/C, the opposition being incompetent and marching/picketing for no good reason, may be intended to provided the PPP/C with a justificatory backdrop, and make no mistake; in our context, these may well prove sufficient to the task of further racialising the PPP/C’s traditional base.
For the above reasons the opposition needs to do two things and quickly. First and less importantly, it needs to try to avoid providing the PPP/C with mobilisation opportunities. This is an almost impossible task as the smallest disconnect between the parties can be projected in a negative manner and so the opposition needs to have its own well oiled communications machinery to counter the incoming propaganda. More importantly, the opposition needs to seek to make the constitutional changes that will make the present separation of powers more permanent and not just dependent upon the vagaries of the Westminster system.
This will depend very much upon its capacity to establish a strategic approach in negotiations with the PPP/C on the various substantive issues.
Of course, the PPP/C was not defeated at the last elections. It is still the government, and I am with those, both in and outside its ranks, who would argue that the party has been provided with an historic opportunity to create a better framework for our governance. Our recent history demonstrates the damage that can occur when such opportunities are missed.
President Hoyte did not grasp similar opportunities on the two occasions they presented themselves. Given how the PNC was keeping itself in office and in light of his tenure as a member of the Elections Commission, Mr. Hoyte should have realised that once the Berlin Wall had fallen, the game was up.
Instead, he kept faith with the Westminster model and some notion that a significant number of Indians would vote for Desmond (Hoyte) Persaud! Even during the constitutional reform opportunity in 2001, he was still in the Westminster mode. Perhaps he was just too wedded to the general framework of the 1980 constitution, which he had helped to design. It was only a few months before he died that he began to accept the need to fundamentally restructure the process. This is not intended as a criticism of Mr. Hoyte, for the human mind works in diverse ways and he was not and still is not the only one afflicted by this myopia. I simply wish to point out that had those opportunities been taken the tribulations of which his constituency complains and which have undermined the development of all Guyana may not have occurred.
Regardless of what is peddled at elections time, in my opinion one would have had to be delusional and prone to sycophantic outpourings to have believed all the nonsense about the PPP/C wining the majority of African votes, vastly increasing its cross-over constituency, etc and most of the leaders the PPP/C knew better.
So far, the new government has done absolutely nothing to change the electoral dynamics and returning to its traditional supporters with the complaint that it cannot govern as it likes without realising that this is precisely the condition many of them voted to achieve, may be a disaster.
Nothing the opposition has done so far has negatively affected the PPP/C constituency and I hope that that party’s leadership is not confusing its interest with that of its constituency. The present challenge to the PPP/C is to risk the traditional ethnic approach or to try to create a new constitutional framework that will provide guaranteed racial equitability.
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
