Grandfathers may no longer be grandfathers when in power

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, FREDDIE KISSOON

If there is anything I have learnt both as a human-rights activist and a trained academic is that power is an irresistible temptation that has destroyed the best of intentions and the best of men and women throughout history in all parts of the world. When the PPP came to power in 1992 I was elated. It ended the long, long reign of the PNC. The PNC reign certainly wasn’t a bed of roses. The PNC rule was too long and Guyana needed a change of faces and ideas. There were personal implications for me; fear of victimization was gone.

There was the realization in 1992 that there would be more space for creative, liberating politics. I have never been a PPP supporter but I knew all the leaders of the PPP through my activism as a WPA activist, a UG student then a UG lecturer and as a media operative. You had to be glad that people you knew closely were now in power. You could go to them to support democratic projects. These were people that you knew from your long years of interactions with that would be better leaders, better in many ways than those who governed for almost three decades

To say that I was just a casual acquaintance with many PPP leaders would be a huge understatement. I knew many of them closely. WPA leaders and PPP leaders were tight as they say in local lingo. The long friendship between WPA and PPP leaders, PPP leaders and anti-dictatorship activists, me and PPP leaders came to an end as 1992 and the years afterwards started to pass into history. Only one culprit was at work – power. The little boys and girls in the PPP that became mature adults after 1992, the “great” Cheddi Jagan that became President after 1992, the humble doctor, Roger Luncheon that rode on a bicycle to work were all transformed into personalities that had no bearing to their pre-1992 character. Power did that to them.

People will tell you not to enter the den of gambling, smoking, doing hard drugs; alcohol consumption because once in there is no exit (remember the meaning of the world famous song, Hotel California?). But in a most strange philosophical irony in human society, people never advise others to stay away from power. Why it is ironic is because the billions of pages of history books are instructive of what political power does to people who get hold of it.

If you believe Mandela only wanted one presidential term because of age then you are mistaken. He didn’t want power to destroy his legacy. Gorbachev and Mahatma Gandhi were contemptuous of power. Eusi Kwayana would have frowned on any Ministerial job if offered. So why would humans advise others that they should run for office? Because people believe that humans are inherently good people and that the world needs citizens with ideas, courage and imagination to change it for the better.

The philosophical danger in that thinking is that you need power to implement your ideas but power is always pregnant with flawed instincts. Greece is the latest manifestation of how power can lead to deception and destruction. The left-wing party, Syriza saw a chance to save Greece from horrible debt relief requirements. It campaigned on a bandwagon of the rejection of such conditions. After victory, Syriza’s Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, implemented the same requirements he denounced when in opposition. Tsipras wanted power, he got it, it turned him into another person and caused a huge rebellion in his party. It is much too early to judge the APNU-AFC Government on the use of power. But we mortals must at all times remember that power does strange things to even good women and honourable men.

President Granger is a grandfather so is Prime Minister, Moses Nagamootoo. The nation knows Nagamootoo a long, long time ago; he has been around politics forever. He is now the Prime Minister. Will he be the grandfather we knew so long? Isn’t the grandfather now the second most powerful man in Guyana? Most Guyanese, even the Indian constituencies of the PPP, felt somewhere in their mind that David Granger was not from the seventies with any baggage. Granger always came across as a decent family man that would have made a good president. But that Granger we knew before 2015 is now in power. Will he be the same man now he is president? Will our new Cabinet Minister be the same people we knew on the picket line and in the battles against PPP dictatorship? Are any signs there to cause concern? Let’s wait and see.