Dear Editor,
It was in the early 1980s after the assassination of Dr Walter Rodney during the Burnhamite dictatorship that the PPP was debating whether to confront or have dialogue with the ruling PNC.
This debate took the form of county conferences, and at the Berbice conference, speaker after speaker who supported dialogue reduced the notion that confronting the PNC meant only armed struggle, and repeatedly used the old worn and abused Marxist maxim of the subjective and objective conditions not being conducive to that type of struggle.
Our alternative proposal was that confrontation is multi-dimensional and includes all form of extra-parliamentary struggle, such as civil disobedience, picketing, marches, etc, and metaphorically I raised my arms to indicate that if it does comes to that we do have arms. This symbolic gesture raised the tempo somewhat in favour of confrontation.
Moses Nagamootoo, a proponent of dialogue, was quick on the counter attack and said, “Yes we need arms but first you have to have brains to make a revolution.” I did not follow the thinking of his brain then on the matter of dialogue, and certainly do not now by his junior coalition with the PNCR.
Some of the prominent members of the present PNCR were former ministers, presidential advisers, police and army officers during the Burnham regime. The nature of that being has not changed; we just need to reflect on how the delegates of the Linden PNC were treated at their last congress to understand the dominating nature of the leadership of the PNC when you hold a different viewpoint.
I am still trying to figure how Mr Nagamootoo’s brains would tell him that the PNCR will treat his party differently when their views do not coincide.
Yours faithfully,
Reggie Bhagwandin
