Dear Editor,
A clarification is necessary to a point made by Ralph Ramkarran in his exchanges with Eusi Kwayana on the PCD appointment of a prime ministerial candidate prior to the 1992 elections (‘The WPA needs to acknowledge its own role in events in 1991 and 1992…’ SN, December 15). The clarification relates to the following statement: “After the break-up of the PCD the PPP approached the GUARD movement, formed the PPP/CIVIC and secured the agreement of Sam Hinds to be a PPP/C prime ministerial candidate. The Civic group replaced the WPA and DLM as allies of the PPP.”
The statement suggests that the events depicted in this statement were sequential, i,e. PPP enters into agreement with GUARD, then Sam Hinds – GUARD Chairman ‒ is appointed prime ministerial candidate, followed by GUARD becoming ‘Civic’ and displacing the WPA and DLM as allies of the PPP. Viewed from a distance, the sequence of events suggests the one caused the other, but, in fact, it leads to a completely false conclusion.
The facts are as follows. The approach to Sam Hinds by Dr Jagan was entirely personal. A somewhat fractious meeting had been held previously between a delegation from the PPP and some of the GUARD Steering Committee, but the issue of Sam Hinds as PM never arose in that meeting. The offer from the PPP was made to Sam Hinds personally. When the matter became public, a full meeting of the GUARD Steering Committee, some 12 or 14 people, was convened in which Sam Hinds was unanimously told he must resign as Chair of GUARD if he intended to accept the offer of the PPP. The meeting ended amicably and he resigned.
The statement that GUARD formed the basis of Civic displacing the WPA and DLM as allies of the PPP has no truth in it at all. I don’t doubt that both Dr Jagan and Sam Hinds, as well as a significant segment of the business community in GUARD all hoped GUARD would go along with a fait accomplit of Sam having accepted the offer – but it didn’t happen.
GUARD committed suicide as a civic movement through its failure to stay out of party politics. Religious bodies and some NGOs, including the GHRA opposed to meddling in party politics were out-manoeuvred, first by the business faction and shortly after by another grouping that created the ill-fated Guyana Labour Party.
The idea of ‘Civic’ as an ally of the PPP is, in itself, difficult to grasp, since my understanding is that it had no organizational structure at all, but comprised a series of individuals selected to provide a ‘rainbow’ image for the PPP: (one Portugese (Bernard Dos Santos), one Chinese (George Fung-On) and one Amerindian (Vibert Da Souza), one Afro-Guyanese (Henry Jeffrey).
Yours faithfully,
Mike McCormack
