Stabroek News’s ‘Prison-break carnage’ (SN:18/11/2019) presents us with broad facts that occurred during a specific period, namely February 2002 to September 2006, but facts are mainly useful if they can help us to find explanations that prevent the recurrence of unwanted events and/or facilitate the creation of the things we desire. How then can the numbers presented and the picture painted by SN’s claim that over 425 persons lost their lives in the above period contribute to our understanding and improving our condition?
Firstly, I take it that the above period was chosen not essentially because persons died in ‘unexplained circumstances’, were murdered by bandits or in confrontation with police. In themselves, such incidents are worthy of investigation but the period was chosen mainly because of the political use that is usually made of these incidents by ruling establishment. The PNCR and its supporters usually present these deaths as largely being of their supporters that resulted from the draconian security responses of an uncaring PPP/C government.
Remember too that the number of persons who died is also in dispute. It was no less a person than President David Granger who at one point claimed that ‘Society has been scarred by violence, which left a lingering legacy of distrust with the potential of fresh disorder. Monuments at Bartica, Buxton and Eve Leary have been erected to the victims (1,431 by his count) of violence during the ‘troubles’ between 2002 and 2009. We still have an obligation to investigate those ‘troubles’ and ensure that the culprits are brought to justice’ (SN: 30/01/2018).
The SN numbers are useful in that they are presented in a structured fashion that would require those who contest them to now provide a more in-depth formulation of their position. Furthermore, following upon the president’s promise, this column has already argued that it is unconscionable and suggestive that a regime with a penchant for conducting all manner of enquiries has not found the time to enquire into this period, and to blame and/or prosecute those who are found to be at fault and compensate those who have suffered loss of life or property.
Thirdly, it should also be noted that even if we begin our consideration in a comparatively modern time, although it poignantly draws our attention to Guyana’s contemporary political predicament, the SN presentation contains only a small portion of the story we need to understand to come to useful conclusions. For example, depending upon how one looks at the numbers, they may not be considered as bad as what previously occurred. Cheddi Jagan wrote the following about what took place more than half a century ago. ‘The toll for the 1964 disturbances was very heavy. About 2,668 families involving approximately 15,000 persons were forced to move their houses and settle in communities of their own ethnic group. The large majority were Indians. Over 1,400 homes were destroyed by fire. A total of 176 people were killed and 920 injured.’
What is the solution to these political disturbances and tensions? It should be noted that the loss of lives and property have occurred mainly when the PNCR, that has historically won just over 40% of the votes at national elections, has been out of government and one discerning scholar drew our attention to the problem and suggests the solution. ‘In reality, how members of ethnic groups participate in politics, ¬democratic or otherwise, ¬will be determined by a whole range of factors …. For example, a minority group that votes as a bloc is something of a curiosity when it makes up 1% of the population of a state, but an existential threat to democracy when it makes up 40%’ (Orr, Scott. The Theory and Practice of Ethnic Politics: How What We Know about Ethnic Identity Can Make Democratic Theory Better. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, 2007). Both old and young are complicit in this kind of ethnicised behaviour that, contrary to the usual platitudes, is not amenable to economic bribery or education for the educators are the different ethnic entrepreneurs!
I am speaking here to the PPP/C for the way it is going about its business suggests that the above insight remains foreign to its current leaders who prefer to see the problem as resulting essentially from government confrontation with bandits in the garb of political revolutionaries rather than as a natural outcome of our ethnic configuration. ‘So, the PNC may want to reexamine its strategy of trying to lay “the troubles” at the feet of the PPP or making it a racial issue. The “troubles” affected everyone. People have told me that whatever means were used to win the battle against the local terrorists was for the greater good for the greater number. Those were desperate times that required desperate measures. That was the time when the government was under siege because fear and crime stalked the land. (‘SN report on crime has brought out truth about that period:’ SN: 21/11/2019).
Former Prime Minister Samuel Hinds came closer to the truth but also missed the boat! ‘The term ‘Jagdeo era killings’, which has even been repeated by President Granger, is to be regretted, as it is misleading. That submerged subterranean killing wave has its origin in the rejection of the PPP/C win at our 1997 elections, by an opposing and extreme criminal fringe with ethno-political pretensions and links, which, when our national security forces were not having any success in apprehending them, evoked a similar irregular counter-force. The period from 1998 to 2008 was one of great testing of our peoples and our country. …. Rather than make it appear that Jagdeo and/or the PPP/C was the cause of those troubles, I submit, that it should be recognised that our (PPP/C) handling of that period, though criticised from many directions, saw our nation through as a whole, avoiding the intensified polarization which was intended’ (KN: 02/02/2018).
Having used the draconian methods for which it is usually blamed by the PNCR and not properly understanding the context indicated to us by Orr, by the end of the first decade of the 21st century the PPP/C thought it had won. Or, as the prime minister claimed, ‘our (PPP/C) handling of that period, though criticised from many directions, saw our nation through as a whole, avoiding the intensified polarization which was intended.’ Alarmingly, he still held to this conclusion in 2018 at a time when his party leader had already been dragged before the court on charges of extreme ethnic mobilization and society could not have been more polarised signaling to all who cared to understand that the PPP/C had failed to suppress ethnic preferences and strife.
Absent Cheddi Jagan, for its remaining decades in the political arena, the PPP/C has neither sensibly explained nor visibly tried to change its behaviour to indicate how in a competitive democracy, it intends to deal with the 40% existential threat. It merely continues to hold on to a naive view that if it wins just over 50% of the vote it will have the democratic right and will be allowed to rule! The fact of the matter is that the 40% will not go away; will either have to be accommodated on mutually agreed terms or attempts again be made to push it away ushering in another desperate time that will require more desperate measures!
