The PPP likes to tell the story of how Arthur Schlesinger Jr., an adviser to the late President John F Kennedy in the 1960s, apologized to Dr. Jagan for his part in “great injustice” that threw Jagan out of government as if, somehow, this meant that the United States establishment was contrite about their role in the destabilization of the PPP government. Had the US government a change of heart, it could at any time before the fall of the Berlin Wall pressed the PNC to have free and fair elections in Guyana. It appears to me that if the 1992 PPP/C victory proved anything, it was that, given the manner in which the US administration constructed its interests, it was correct to keep the PPP at bay until that interest was secured!
However, once the Wall fell, Mr. Hoyte came under pressure and was gradually making all round concessions: more open media, counting of votes at the place of poll, a more independent election commission, etc. Given the mood of the opposition, their degree of mobilisation and international involvement, the level of electoral manipulation that would have been required to keep the PNC in office was near impossible.
Desmond Hoyte was a stalwart of the PNC: he represented that party on the elections commission in the heyday of electoral manipulation. He gained the notoriety in that the most severely rigged elections in our history took place under his watch. He was too seasoned a campaigner to believe that simply adopting the sobriquet Desmond Persaud would have won him Indian votes! Indeed, Mr. Hoyte may well have smelt the roses of defeat. Elections which were due in 1990, was put off for two years to allow proper arrangements to be established but in 1991 the government was strengthening the presidential pensions rights!
His strategic advantage having evaporated with the fall of communism had he a proper grasp of his context, Hoyte had other options. Although he jettisoned Burnham’s national unity discussion with the PPP immediately upon taking office, he could have attempted to restart them but even out of office he could not contain his dislike for the PPP: nostalgically lamenting on one occasion that he had spent his entire life helping to keep it from government! Indeed, it was only a few years before his death that Hoyte recognised that our Westminster type political governance arrangement is insufficient for our condition.
Here then is a case of a leader whose strategic advantage, like the British case, had permanently disappeared but was unable to take the opening to move us forward largely because he did not adequately understand our problem. The result of this missed opportunity is that two decades later we are essentially at the same political place. The difference being that the PPP/C has now lost its strategic advantage and has the opportunity to try to take the country backwards or forwards.
For some half a century until the elections of November 2011 the PPP ethnic base served it well. So well that some in the party began to believe and act as if that strategic advantage was permanent. This gave rise to a kind of hubris not unlike that which came upon a section of the right wing political elite in the US after the fall of communism. And just as their chauvinistic exuberance incensed many persons nationally and internationally, the PPP/C’s excesses alienated sufficient of its traditional supporters and thus led to its present minority status. However, just like the Obama administration has been gradually rebuilding the loss of US soft power, many in the PPP/C, view their loss as temporary: something that could be rebuilt.
Particularly at election times, both the PNC and the PPP play to their ethnic base. However, having more to lose, during the last election campaign we had many vivid public examples of the PPP/C doing just that. For example, consider the racist interpretation that it attempted to put on the minor disturbance which took place at City Hall on nomination day! Long before the pernicious racist editorial which was so widely condemned, the Guyana Chronicle had been attempting to ethnically radicalise the base. Consider this: “Moses Nagamootoo has failed his people. He was bullied into supporting APNU’s racist agenda of putting a ‘black man’ in the chairs of Speaker and Deputy Speaker. So in Nagamootoo’s case, he is not only a traitor (PPP) but a chicken (APNU).” (Baldeo Mathura: “Nagamootoo’s Contretemps:” Guyana Chronicle: 18/01/12).
Had the police not killed some protesters in Linden it would have provided the perfect feeding ground for PPP/C propagandists. Indeed, the killings placed the regime in a dilemma.
Two weeks ago I concluded this column with the suggestion that if Linden teaches anything it is that the PPP/C cannot alone manage this nation and after two very difficult decades in office, I suspect that the PPP/C realizes this. Its many protestations that it is doing the best it could “in the given circumstances” are clear indications of this. But even if that party
