Dear Editor,
Mr Mike Persaud, in his letter captioned “Mr Burke and others fail to understand the need to develop a genuine multi racial democracy” (07.11.14) does not recognize the power of culture in achieving cohesiveness among races in the battle for dominance. Breaking down the practice of ethnic voting and ending the existence of ethnic parties are easier said than done. The demonstration by the PNC that it can be led only by an African is not different from the position in the PPP. Mrs Jagan’s leadership of the PPP proves the rule that the PPP will be led only by an East Indian or by a white person.
Contrary to Mr Persaud’s assertion that the PNC showed no willingness to appeal to the Indian majority, Mr Hoyte did make a genuine effort to secure East Indian votes. One East Indian who decided to vote for the PNC came out of the voting booth, lamenting that “da cup, he ah drag me hand.” A very learned East Indian said in Washington that he could never vote for the PNC. I perfectly understand his sentiment since I would find it difficult to vote for the PPP.
Democracy in multiracial Guyana is a function of democracy within the political parties.
A change of national government would occur when political parties can change the race of their leaders. More preparedness to tolerate racial diversity in the ultimate leader would conceivably carry over to less ethnic rigidity in voting patterns in the country.
Change in the race of the leader will follow when revolutionary ideas such as the dismantling of the plantation mode of production are debated within the political parties. A fundamental debate over the historical foundations of Guyanese society will raise issues related to more economic democracy for workers such as liberating the cane cutter from cutting cane for all of his life.
That debate will question the wisdom of the Skeldon project. It will raise concerns about GAWU’s credentials as workers’ representatives and crack the present monolithic power, based largely on race, in the PPP.
By the same token, the semi plantation relations in rice planting can be challenged as undemocratic. Co-operative shareholding by farmers in rice mills will transform social relations in the rice industry and remove many of the repressive features of rice production.
This reasoning re-directs Mr Persaud’s focus for genuine reform from the PNC to the PPP. Liberation of sugar workers and rice farmers is the most urgent reform that is necessary for economic democracy and ultimately for social and political democracy.
Only time will tell whether those proposed radical reforms will break the cultural and racial cohesiveness in the PPP. There is no denying, however, that there is greater likelihood of the acceptance of these ideas if they are advanced from within the ranks of the PPP rather than from the PNC. From this point of view, it is obvious that Mr Persaud’s recommendations scratch only the surface of the problem of ethnic voting. We are still largely living on the plantocracy’s plantation. That is the root cause of the problem of ethnic voting. The planters exploited racial differences and their descendants continue to manipulate the divisions.
Mr Persaud should probe more deeply into the different histories and the different economies of the races if he wishes to understand the phenomenon of ethnic voting. Those analyses have hardly been undertaken in terms that relate the backwardness of our politics to the ancient forms of our economic and social relations.
Yours faithfully,
Clarence F. Ellis
