The wise words of Carl Greenidge--Freddie Kissoon

JUNE 24, 2015 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, FREDDIE KISSOON

It never crossed my mind until Carl Greenidge focused on it. After his words, I began to put some analytical touches on it. I mentioned the words of Greenidge in a column recently, and it is worth repeating them now that there seems to be a whirlwind of debates on the next PPP leader. The place was New Amsterdam. The time was past midnight. The backdrop was the APNU-AFC New Amsterdam rally. Directly opposite the Banks DIH outlet, David Hinds and I engaged Carl in a long, analytical discourse on politics. Greenidge was enraged and worried about Jagdeo’s race-baiting rhetoric. I asked him if he thought Jagdeo’s race game would chase Berbicians back to the PPP, thus denting the AFC. He said yes. GECOM has now released station by station voting and the citizens can see how Indians voted. They removed their faith in the AFC, thus making the election the closest competition in Guyanese electoral history. So close it was that the coalition took Region Eight by one vote. As the conversation looked at the possibility of another PPP government, all three of us agreed that if the PPP won, the party would have concluded that it has a permanent mandate, and its sixth government would see fascist repression. None of us saw any hope of a better PPP leadership. And it was Carl who said that if you take a look at the younger PPP leaders, some are even worse than the aging stalwarts. I never thought of such an analysis before. The closest I came to that idea was in early 2011, when the son of one of the leading PPP bigwigs said that he found Priya Manickchand to be more “PPPish” than even the big leaders at the top. Carl Greenidge is on target. If you do an assessment of the young Turks who people think are in line to replace the dinosaurs from the seventies and eighties, then as they say in Guyanese proverbial style, “it’s the same boodups.” Why aren’t these second-tier leaders reformist and fertile with liberating ideas? The answer lies in the route they used to get into the PPP. They all came into the PPP when the PPP was in government and enjoyed absolute power. All they knew was a hegemonic PPP that made the PPP coterminous with the entire country. All they saw and knew was a government (that they became part of) that did what it wanted, how it wanted, whenever it wanted. The failure in imagination by the newcomers in the PPP leadership began with Jagdeo. He was never part of the PPP in opposition. Roger Luncheon, testifying at my libel trial brought by Jagdeo, told the court that he first knew of Jagdeo after 1992. The reason for this was because Jagdeo was a little boy during the days when the PPP was in opposition. Jagdeo took a high level job in the Ministry of Finance under Jagan after 1992 and saw the evolution of the PPP’s hegemony. He knew nothing about democratic government, because the government he served under Dr. Jagan was racist and domineering. Jagdeo, when he became President, ushered into the corridors of power a school of young newcomers. And what did they see? They witnessed what Jagdeo lived with under Cheddi Jagan – a government that did what it wanted with Guyana. The young Turks, then, whose names are in contention, are tainted people. People without a sense of right and wrong; people who have been immersed in the abuse of power, the culture of corruption, the immoralities, debaucheries and morbidities of dictatorship. They do not understand what democratic governance is, because they have not seen a democratic government with the President that patronized them. There is no indication whatsoever that the dinosaurs will give up the leadership of the PPP before the 2020 elections. But let us assume that some unforeseen circumstance exorcizes them from the PPP’s biology, it is naïve to think that any of the younger monarchs, whether male or female, will be any different from the troglodytes that lost two consecutive national elections. If the PPP hopes to win the 2020 election, and if it wants to stay in the consciousness of the Guyanese people, and if it wants a cross-racial embrace from the nation, a brand new face has to be catapulted to the top of the hierarchy. He/she has to be someone that Africans find to be fair-minded and East Indians find to be approachable and honest. That is asking someone to find a pin in the forest dropped from a plane. But miracles do happen and dreams do come true.