According to Prime Minister Hinds, Cheddi Jagan believed that national unity between the races and classes was so important to nation building that throughout his political life he attempted “new, bold and courageous alternatives to bring our people together” but died without his goal being realised. Last week (“The Prime Minister’s Cognitive Delusion”(SN 28/5/14), I outlined what Jagan actually attempted and promised to juxtapose that against what is now being proposed by the PM. Doing so is important for at least two reasons.
Firstly, it is generally accepted that national unity is vital if we are to make the most of our context and be able to live the best lives we can. Secondly, the PM has been at a strategic level of PPP/C politics for a sufficient number of years to be able to understand and adequately articulate the regime’s current offerings in this area, and he offered to do just that when he enquired: “What can we do today to continue our journey in Cheddi’s aspiration?”
On the first issue, only a few days ago, Ralph Ramkarran, speaking of the first General Council of the PPP, reminded us that “As the true founding fathers and mothers of our nation, by merely coming together from such disparate backgrounds, they sent a message that a successful political movement in Guyana and genuine economic and political liberation and progress and prosperity for our nation, could only be achieved by ethnic unity and broad class solidarity” (“The promise of 1950” SN 25/05/2014).
But notwithstanding that Cheddi Jagan spent his entire life in pursuit of national unity, according to the PM “For Cheddi, National Unity was an extremely desirable, if not essential, condition for National Development. … National Unity remains a requirement for National Development, and National Development is the reward which sweetens our sacrifices for National Unity.”
The PPP loves to claim that it has remained true to the spirit of Cheddi Jagan, but here we have an important piece of post-Cheddi Jagan PPP revisionism. Even if we put aside the logical difficulty you may detect in claiming that something is a “requirement” but is not necessarily “essential” and even if we accept that some level of economic growth may be possible without it, the idea of building a nation without a significant level of national unity is self-contradictory.
This shift in emphasis suggests that the post-Cheddi PPP has decided that national unity is secondary and that the country can develop, albeit perhaps not optimally, and its people prosper and live well under the hegemony of the PPP, which has no intention of losing power, anytime soon, given its ethnic base. National unity will gradually be developed over many decades.
Of course, this kind of theorizing is not new and flourishes in ethnic conflict situations where political dominance has become the goal. For example, some right-wing Israeli Jews hold a similar position in relation to the Palestinians, being set against the Palestinians ever living as an independent people in a state of their own. Thus, Naftali Bennet, Minister of the Economy and leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party, has said that he “will do everything in my power to make sure they [the Palestinians] never get a state” (Wikipedia).
According to Bennet et al., every time the Jews have made concessions to the Palestinians, they have been used to harm and kill Jews. As a result, the Jews must learn to live with the Palestinian problem and the Palestinians must learn to live under Jewish hegemony. Since the Palestinians are unlikely to accept this kind of control, the Jewish state must be so organised as to maintain itself in the context of continued Palestinian resistance.
No wonder then that a couple of months ago, US Secretary of State John Kerry drew much Israeli ire and had to apologize for suggesting that if the two-state solution to the Palestinian problem is rejected, Israel risks becoming either an apartheid state or one with a substantial number of second-class citizens (The Guardian, 29/04/2014).
The PPP’s revisionist framework of ethnic/political dominance, to which Mr. Hinds must now adhere, does not allow for people to be brought together in various forms of equitable coalitions, alliance, etc. and gradually learn to work, respect and trust each. The result is that he serves us the following absurdity as the answer to our complex and pressing ethnic/political problem. With the sufferance of the editor, we must give him substantial space to speak for himself.
“We need increased free, voluntary socialization amongst our people. Free association is still too limited to people near to us and in our comfort zone: we are not reaching out enough across the fences of our differences, as Cheddi reached out in the years following his return. …. How can we all get to the place of telling the same stories about ourselves and singing the same new common song in this land, where our fore-parents were thrown together? How can we get to seeing each other as “jihajibhai”, journey brothers –sharing our common experiences in this land: our misunderstandings, our wrongs to each other, without forgivings of each other becoming our bond.
At times, I sense beginnings in the Bartica area, where we realize how few and puny we are as we journey on the mighty Mazaruni River and amongst the overwhelmingly giant greenheart and mora trees; in Sophia, out of their common, intense struggle in that desperate squatting venture, a quarter century ago; amongst batch-mates from the teachers’ training college; among nurses, policemen, soldiers; amongst batch-mates from our national service, but not so, as yet, amongst graduates from our University of Guyana.
Thinking again …. I am emboldened to raise again a thought of some years ago – that it would be good if we would develop reading books like the Victorian Royal Readers of our great grand-parents, for each grade from nursery school to the end of University, entitled “The Religions of our Fore-fathers”, in which the stories that we now learn separately as Christians, Hindus and Muslims,would be all provided in one common reading book, so that our new Guyanese generations would have a common framework in which they might find significance and by which they might live.”
Many thoughts may have justifiably crossed your minds upon reading the above, but I am sure you will agree that paraphrasing could not do justice to the Prime Minister’s mind set or adequately convey the contrast between Cheddi’s courage and Sam’s pusillanimity.
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
