Dear Editor,
Two quotes are necessary to place the recent furore over statements made by Tacuma Ogunseye in national political context. The first appears in a section of the Stabroek News (SN) editorial on the Ogunseye case: “The AG has said that Mr. Ogunseye is not covered under the Freedom of Expression clause in the Constitution, and indeed he is not. He listed various offences of which he could be guilty including seditious libel and inciting riotous behavior, among others.” (Stabroek News editorial). The second is the statement attributed to Ogunseye himself: “A white man [diplomat – R.K] pulled me in a corner. And he said: ‘I don’t understand, a people complaining that they are oppressed, and they have all the guns in their hands. They are the majority in the army, the majority in the police and they still say they are oppressed.’ Ogunseye continued: “What he was saying is that our problem is of our own making. Our problem is of our own making. Anytime we turn those guns in the right direction, it is over.”” President Irfaan Ali, in his address to the nation, used the video of the words spoken above by Ogunseye as evidence to repeat Attorney General Nandlall’s charges listed by the SN editorial. First, let us examine what the SN, the AG, and the President claims that Ogunseye is advocating: the “turning the guns on the oppressors”. Citizens of a nation have the right to rebel against “oppressive” governments. That is a right enshrined in all democratic constitutions that are themselves invariably born out of violent struggle (witness the American and French revolutions). The simple question is, how can the words of Ogunseye command the army and the police to point their guns away from an “oppressed people” protesting against an “oppressive government”?
Ogunseye cannot rub “Aladdin’s Lamp” and accomplish this task. No magic genie will come out of the OIL LAMP saying “Master, your wish is my command”. The political work necessary to accomplish this goal would have had to be developed over time and the social and political conditions would have had to reflect the truth of his words. Stabroek News, in its article, makes the case that the PNC must repudiate the WPA, in support of the charges made by the AG and the President. We are now at the heart of the matter. The PPP is aware that the PNC by itself is doomed to remain in opposition. It has seized upon the proverbial “straw man” to drive the wedge between the WPA and the PNC even deeper, given the present divide. This is a life and death strategy for the PPP in the current situation. It was also the strategy during the WPAs challenge to the PNC dictatorship, evidenced by the labeling of the WPA as “the worst possible alternative”.
In the height of the struggle in the 1979-80 period against the Burnham-led PNC dictatorship, the Jagan-led PPP told the WPA quite bluntly that the WPA must work in the African-Guyanese community. It saw the WPA as encroaching in its domain, the Indian-Guyanese community. There was a strained relationship between the WPA and the PPP on this matter. A similar dynamic is at work between the WPA and the PNC, in the battle for support in the Afro-Guyanese community. Stabroek News correctly portrays the disarray in the PNC leadership and the other members of the “coalition” in the wake of the attempt to rig the last elections. The WPA is also conscious of that disarray and the PNC’s inability to give effective leadership in the current situation.
The response of WPA to give effective leadership in the face of the PPP’s onslaught on the opposition has resonated with the discontent among the masses. This has led to the panic attack by the PPP on Ogunseye by the officialdom of the state. The PPP’s diehard “cultural” group led by the Ravi Devs, etc. has joined in chorus, like sharks smelling blood. Whether the PPPs strategy of “divide and rule” will succeed is highly debatable. The PNC/R made mockery of the Reform upon the electoral victory in the 2015 elections reverting to the Burnhamist model. The shutting down of the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry (WRCOI) set the basis for the PNC’s relations with the WPA. The WRCOI revealed the role of the security forces in facilitating the activities of GDF Gregory Smith, ultimately flying him out of the country after his murderous act. The WRCOI concluded that the Burnham regime was responsible for the assassination of Walter Rodney.
What is not so well known currently is that the PPP, upon coming to power in the 1992 elections, blatantly refused to set up a commission of inquiry into Rodney’s death. It became obvious that it was part of a secret deal with the US to grant the PNC an amnesty in exchange for relinquishing power. The PPP finally set up a commission of inquiry in 2013, as an attempt to discredit the PNC in time for the 2015 elections. The intent was to drive a wedge between the WPA and the PNC. The current machination of the PPP is a continuation of this strategy. So, what is fueling the state’s response to Ogunseye? Simply oil dollars! What the PPP has to lose, and the opposition to gain in a struggle for power is the billions of dollars sitting in the Sovereign Wealth Fund waiting to be spent?
The PPP is guaranteed control of this money as long as the opposition remains divided. It does not take a genius to read the tea leaves and arrive at this conclusion: the PPP, in its political posturing must ensure that the opposition is divided to secure a PPP victory in the next elections, to remain in control of the oil money. But Guyana’s politics will only become more vicious if the concept of power sharing is not addressed in a serious manner. Democracy is not simply a matter of electoral victory, in which “to the victor goes the spoils”. The President’s address to the nation, and his usage of the video of Ogunseye is a stark reminder of how the PPPs response to its undemocratic policies is being touted as the essence of democracy.
In closing, we should reflect on these extracted words from Lani Guinier (legal scholar and civil rights theorist) reflecting on the American experience in her book “The Tyranny of the Majority”: “Majority rule is unfair in situations where the majority is racially prejudiced against the minority to such a degree that the majority consistently excludes the minority…Simply put, racism excludes minorities from ever becoming part of the governing coalition…thereby transforming majority rule into majority tyranny…Giving the minority a turn does not mean does not mean the minority gets to rule; what it does mean is that the minority gets to influence decision-making and the majority rules more legitimately”. We can twist these words to mean whatever we want them to mean. But it is an inescapable fact that democracy is not satisfied by a majority delegitimizing the rights of a significant minority. To paraphrase a popular saying ‘any house divided against itself will fall.’
Sincerely,
Rohit Kanhai
