Dear Editor,
I refer to Dr. Rishee Thakur’s letter “The long and short of it” (KN Oct. 6) in which he equates the work of the AFC to a form of counter-hegemonic strategy aimed at destabilising the PPP as a multiracial party.
I have engaged in serious debates with Dr. Thakur before and I welcome the opportunity to do so again. I should say at the outset that he is a learned gentleman and I have a good deal of respect for him. I must also say that I was unable to fathom Dr. Thakur’s point.
Thakur’s one line letter is at best a thesis statement, or if one wants to be generous, a hypothesis. I am taken aback that knowing this he presented his point as if it were the conclusion to an exhaustive analysis.
For Thakur’s point (I don’t know what else to call it) to deserve further consideration he must specify what he means by counter-hegemony. For him to do so in a meaningful way, he must let us know what is meant by PPP hegemony in the first place.
Readers should know that Dr. Thakur wrote a 500-page dissertation in which he demonstrated how urban hegemony in Guyana would disallow a successful hegemonic project by the PPP. He must either abandon his original formulation (1994), or tell us about the reconfiguration of the political in Guyana that would allow for a hegemonic PPP. I am afraid Dr. Thakur cannot have it both ways.
Yours faithfully,
Dr. Randy Persaud
