Round and around

Dear Editor,

I too, like Dr Henry Jeffrey, must beg the editor’s sufferance on a debate he provoked. I do so, not because of my disrespect for the column inches, but because of my interest in influencing Guyana’s course of history. I expect at some point in time, editorial policy would intervene to bring the curtains down on any discourse, especially if it becomes pointless like the ‘who rolled away the stone’ discourse, and more so, if it fails to generate a parking meter-type movement or national dialogue at the minimum, with a view to arriving at the “common historical understanding” which Dr Jeffrey seeks.

I consider Dr Jeffrey the consummate academic. His response to mine of SN Feb 7 is replete with selective political thinking cast in theoretical musings of his fancy. But this aside, Dr Jeffrey must be credited for raising to an intellectual level what he describes as “the most important question that has been on the political agenda for the past 60 years.” The question is, on whose political agenda has this question been for the past 60 years?

I can only guess that Dr Jeffrey must be referring to the national agenda, past and present. Or are we to assume he meant the agenda of political parties? And even if we were to give the political parties the benefit of the doubt, it must have been a transient agenda item because it was always subsumed by political expediency  in the quest for political power or the maintenance of that power.

Dr Jeffrey must know, in light of his established academic credentials  and his adroitness at research that if there ever was a political party that attempted to ‘storm the Bastille’ with a view to addressing our “our ethnic condition,” both empirical and logical reasoning would point us in the direction of the PPP. And though that party’s  efforts at various stages of our country’s political evolution might not have brought about what he described as the “necessary solutions… to arrive at a common historical understanding”, its inability to do so was not because the ‘plague’ was on Freedom House; on the contrary, it was because as Jeffrey surmised, and quite correctly so, that it became quite legitimate for the PPP to place responsibility for rejecting its overtures at the doorstep of the PNC, thus banishing  the ‘plague’ from its house.

But then again, while that may very well be a perception, as Dr Jeffrey correctly conceded, it is indeed a political fact! The late University of Guyana Professor, Dr Perry Mars wrote extensively on this complex, if not elusive Guyanese peculiarity. To his credit, he was not intellectually evasive in his interpretation of our past and present ethnic condition; rather, he was courageous enough to identify the elephant in the room. Jeffrey could argue that, like myself, he is part of this historical condition plaguing the two houses for decades. But that is precisely why I have to disagree with his hypothesis. I hold to the view that the plague is on Guyana. It does not matter whether it is on one, two or three houses,  that is beside the point; we must rise above such campsite politics and recognize that the plague is on a house called Guyana.

By the way Dr Jeffrey lopped off six of the PPP/C’s twenty-three years in government, seventeen of which he deemed “disastrous.” Dr Jeffrey served as a PPP/C government minister from  October 1992 to December 2009. It would be useful to know which period during those years was disastrous. Or did disaster strike only after he left?

To say that the PPP is now the ‘Worst Possible Alternative’ government for Guyana is to perpetuate the very thinking Dr Jeffrey seeks to resolve intellectually. He therefore exposes the biased nature of his argument by suggesting that the PPP accepts the role as the political force which must redeem itself through a “common understanding “ with others whom he allows to get off scot free. Purporting to have taken my advice to consult ‘Hindsight’, Dr Jeffrey skilfully picked a recent comment of his academic colleague to corroborate his thesis showing why the PPP should not be returned to office.

It seems to me that a more relevant comment from ‘Hindsight’ would have been the following; “The larger coalition of forces which brought the government to power may be falling apart, or have already fallen apart.” Dr Jeffrey however chose to look at that with a Nelson’s eye.

The catastrophe factor which Dr Jeffrey refers to, that “forces leaders in countries such as ours to adopt the necessary solutions” can be violent or non-violent. We in Guyana have experienced both in the past in terms of regime change. And just in case we haven’t noticed it, we have another catastrophe in the making. And it is clearly the handiwork of the ruling APNU+AFC coalition administration.

Can it be avoided given the present political realities? If it can how? Who must take the initiative and what can be the shape or form of that initiative? Who stands to benefit? Will the larger  mission of  “arriving at a common historical understanding”  be sacrificed once again on the altar of partisan political expediency? But more importantly, the good doctor must tell us whether in the foreseeable future, the call for sharing government in the Guyanese context is utopian or scientific. Every political party in Guyana finds it obligatory as a matter of policy to be part of the national unity, racial harmony narrative. It is difficult, nay almost impossible, to avoid proceeding in that direction.

In Guyana there is no political space for, say, a Geert Wilders or a Marie Le Pen. Those who in the past called for partitioning got nowhere politically in this ethnically and culturally diverse country. Yet while framing the national unity, racial harmony narrative in a positive light, there persists another strongly held view that the country is starkly divided along ethnic and political lines.

Allegations of mistreatment are a recurring political phenomenon irrespective of whether the PPP or PNC is in government. And so long as the extant political status quo prevails that allegation will continue to resonate from both sides of the political divide, binary or otherwise. The evidence is to be found in who does what through its budgetary allocations for people-centred social programmes across the political and racial divide.

Assuming the PPP/C is in government and implements (which it did) such programmes will the PNC accept it? No, it will not – and did not in the past. On the contrary, it will seek to politicize and denigrate the programmes even though its own supporters reap the benefits.  Look at what is happening today with the APNU+AFC in office. And so, around and around it goes; where and when it will stop nobody knows!

Yours faithfully,

Clement J Rohee