Dear Editor,
I would like attempt an answer to a question posed to readers in your Sunday editorial. After looking at the criticism against torture in many regimes around the world when it was in opposition, you inquired as to why the PPP practises or condones torture now that it forms the government. You asked: “Is this a case of some strange dissociative disease? For me the answer is yes. Hannah Arendt has contributed enormously to our understanding of how evil emerges in authoritarian regimes. And though it is outside the scope of this letter to discuss Arendt’s fine and superb contribution to political philosophy, her paradigms are relevant to understanding how the PPP has slipped into a fascistization of the state that is worse than Burnham
Today, most of the Guyanese who lived through the seventies and eighties are traumatized by the apocalypse we see in this country today; the Jagdeo regime is not only worse than Burnham but is semi-fascist. I would like to remind readers that the categorization of semi-fascism is a theory I applied to the PPP five years ago in my Kaieteur News column. The degeneration has widened since those pieces of mine. As the fear in the PPP leaders mount that they may lose the election in 2011, I believe we will see the fascistization process deepening. Which Caribbean country has arrested peaceful picketers? Not even Burnham and Eric Gairy went that far. Under the PNC government, sugar workers picketed almost every day
Ominous signs are on the horizon that Guyana is reliving its frightening moments of political madness which made us a pariah in the Caribbean. All the signs are there. Look at how we are being treated at Caricom airports. Look at the not so subtle attacks on Guyana by some Caricom heads which became less subtle during the EPA controversy.
One Caricom head, though not naming Guyana, felt that Guyana was embarrassing the region with the relentless mendicancy of its leaders. Readers, editors, commentators, the political opposition and other stakeholders need to take a closer look at how the political elites react to their authoritarian policies. Once an egregious output is criticized, there is a pattern which follows in that the present egregiousness is overrun by a greater depth of depravity.
So if they torture a suspect by stomping on his stomach and the society complains, another suspect is brutalized in even more bestial fashion. This country is becoming sadder and sadder with each moment. Will Guyana remain the only tragedy that began in the 20th century and lives on for decades to come? It is my deep, deep wish that if Guyana gets lucky and we vote out the PPP, the succeeding government will institute charges against these people for abuse of power, violations of international laws and crimes against humanity. I call upon my fellow Guyanese to endorse this suggestion of mine.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
