Future Notes

Of the seven Caribbean countries surveyed in the recent United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Citizens Security Survey, Guyana has experienced the greatest loss in human development caused by inequality between the respective achievements of men and women.

Two weeks ago (“PPP/C has an historic opportunity …..:”  SN 25/01/12) I promised to address what it is that politicians can mean when they claim that their policy or actions are based on ‘principle.’

Recently, Newt Gingrich criticised President Obama for being too nuanced in his policy-making and Fareed Zakaria, on one of his CNN programmes, rightly wondered why being nuanced should be criticised.

“I mean, since David Granger opposed Nagamootoo because, ipso facto, the defecting may very well be a ‘spy job’ in the making, then what exempts Trotman from that kind of suspicion (from the rest of the lot)?

Notwithstanding all the opposition talk of seeking to create a new political culture in Guyana, its recent antics are as old as the hills, but the PPP/C is not without fault and should not use the opposition’s faux pas to prevent us from moving forward in a timely and efficacious manner.

The current discourse about the election of a speaker for our new National Assembly has been variously described and assessed but here I will discuss the opportunity it presents us to identify and contemplate some important issues, the nature of which are likely to stay with us as we go forward in the present political context.

“The literature suggests that among the non-school factors of school achievement like socioeconomic background, parent’s educational attainment, family structure, ethnicity and parental involvement, it is the latter which is the most strongly connected to attainment.”

If President Donald Ramotar wants to represent change in and modernisation of the Guyanese political fabric, one of his first priorities must be to put a rein on the type of propaganda with which the PPP has been historically associated.

The 2011 manifesto of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) promised “A Good Life for All Guyanese”: now that it is in a position to help to provide one, we shall see!

Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s “Evil Genius” and Reich Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, who is generally believed to be responsible for bringing that seventeenth century Vatican-created term “propaganda” into disrepute, stated that: “That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to achieve the desired result ….

In early 1990, Cheddi Jagan walked up the steps of the University of Guyana Social Science building, came to the dean’s office and requested that I agree to join the PPP/C slate for the elections that were due later that year. 

“Hi Jeff: has APNU `disappear’ the PNC?” Colourfully put, but not an uncommon query.

A few weeks ago, I argued that when considering manifesto commitments one needs to be aware of, among other things, the disconnect that sometimes exists between

Recently, a parliamentary special select committee, minus the Opposition, reported on the issue of campaign financing.

“We need a space for the Diaspora to contribute to national, regional and international policy dialogue and action.”

“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

“Studying history . . . helps [us] to develop a sense of ‘shared humanity’; to understand themselves and ‘otherness,’ by learning how they resemble and how they differ from other people, over time and space; to question stereotypes of others, and of themselves; to discern the difference between fact and conjecture; to grasp the complexity of historical cause; to distrust the simple answer and the dismissive explanation; to respect particularity and avoid false analogy; to recognize the abuse of historical ‘lessons,’ and to weigh the possible consequences of such abuse; to consider that ignorance of the past may make us prisoners of it; to realize that not all problems have solutions; to be prepared for the irrational, the accidental, in human affairs; and to grasp the power of ideas and character in history.”

“You can’t win a political campaign without momentum.  With momentum, campaigns roll to victory, without it, they linger into defeat. 

Collective planning is impossible without an underlying general consensus on the nature of the problem and the proposed solutions.

The AFC is adamant in its refusal to join a pre-election coalition with old parties mired in old politics and its Acton Plan 2011 speaks of its seeking to establish “A liberal democratic culture for Guyana (based on) Western democratic political systems, such as Australia, the United States, Britain, New Zealand, Canada, India, Brazil and others.”