Dear Editor,
In his letter in the SN of July 21, 2020, Tarron Khemraj wrote; “One columnist wrote us off as being dishonest when we mentioned how difficult it is to measure ethnic distribution of income and wealth.” He is referring to me. I write this reply here so history can be properly recorded and future researchers can have specificities about past events. They will know who said what where, how and where.
I replied to Khemraj in my Kaieteur News column of Monday, March 18, 2019 under, “Only a dishonest academic cannot measure ethnic economic assets.” I quote from that analysis; “One of the most important scholarly books to be published the past twenty years is “Capital in the 21st Century” by French Professor, Thomas Piketty. The vast statistical outlay is staggering and it goes back to the 19th century. Measuring poverty and the economic assets of classes and ethnic groups is now banal academic research. Economists can tell you which ethnic groups in multi-racial countries are on top of the economic ladder. I read a few years ago that Koreans and Chinese immigrants do better on the economic front than other communities in the UK. We know these answers because of statistics. This is why Piketty’s book is so phenomenal. Using statistics, Piketty was able to show that the American dream is over – the poor, the lower middle class and the essential middle class have been getting less from the pie of the US the past fifty years.
I mean no insult to Dr. Khemraj through the unnecessary use of the word, “dishonest” and I hereby withdraw it with a full, unconditional apology but strong words should be employed in rebutting the statement of a practicing economist that it is difficult to measure ethnic structure of wealth and resources in Guyana. What about Guyana that makes such a banal research undertaking difficult?
This is what forms the backbone of economic research. This type of work is what you expect from economists. Guyana has one of the smallest populations in the world and over half of those citizens are not substantial owners of capitalist assets. What makes such a research task formidable? This is Guyana where the abnormal, the incredible, the surreal have long become normal. When Khemraj made that confession, not one academic in this country asked him to explain. I think he should simply tell us why the measurement is a Sisyphean task and if it can be surmounted.
Measurement of the distribution of national wealth is a research project that you will find in most countries. I would ask readers to just Google the topic and the results would be plentiful. My problem with Khemraj who was joined by Dr. Ramesh Gampat in denouncing me a year ago in the letter columns on the subject of the ethnic possession of wealth in Guyana is that scholarship tends to get affected by political bias.
One can see that clearly from two academics recently, Dr. Alissa Trotz and Dr. Arif Bulkan in a piece in the Stabroek column titled “In the Diaspora” with the title, “Guyana’s political tragedy” (June 30, 2020). This is faulty scholarship because it ignores the intervening dialectics of third parties in Guyana since 2011. From 2011, the dynamics of class and race changed significantly with the successful rise of the Alliance For Change (AFC). Together with the WPA, they secured state power in 2015.
Trotz refused to address the betrayal of class politics by the WPA because as a WPA leader she wants to preserve the WPA’s legacy, an impossible task from 2020 onwards for any scholar to attempt. Bulkan refused to address the power intoxication of the AFC because he may have sympathies for that formation.
In the same “In the Diaspora” section this week, there is an analysis by Dr. Omar Shahabudin McDoom and again we see the same fatal flaw in research methodology that Trotz and Bulkan made. Mc Doom attributed no dialectical importance to a third force and completely dismissed the intersection of the AFC into the protracted dilemma of party/ethnic rivalry between the PPP and PNC. But it was the nascent AFC that ousted the PPP in 2011 and 2015.
You cannot research party politics and ethnic competitions after 2015 without some attention being paid to why the AFC and WPA failed to build on that intersection cited above. Someone like Melinda Janki, no political theorist but a lawyer, was able to spot a vacuum in Guyana’s political sociology that Trotz. Bulkan and Mc Doom need to do some research on.
While incorrectly under-emphasizing the persistent destructive role of ethnic hegemonic pursuits, she points to the toxic (her word) nature of politics. Herein lies the error of Trotz, Bulkan and Mc Doom in not focusing on the reasons for the rise and fall of the once powerful WPA and AFC.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
