A brief class analysis of Guyanese political parties

SEPTEMBER 17, 2015 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, FREDDIE KISSOON

I previously wrote that I spoke at 24 public meetings in the election campaign earlier this year. But when I recollect carefully, it was 27. I was conscious through all those platform performances not to make promises to the electorate. I knew I had no influence and authority in the leadership of both AFC and APNU to demand changes once the APNU- AFC was in government. I carefully chose that attitude because I knew I could not make demands of governmental leaders once I was not their equal in the AFC and APNU respectively; I do not hold a membership card in any political party. I threw myself into the 2015 election battle because I knew deep down in my soul that the leadership of the PPP after the death of Jagan had become a semi-fascist organism and I use that term with every ounce of intellectual seriousness. For me the PPP had become macabre, violent, evil and psychologically irrational. I had no choice. I had to contribute to the removal of the Jagdeo/Ramotar madness. What do you call a government that would clean a trench and leave untouched the part where a critic lives? Only word can describe that depravity – evil. What do you call a government that terminates a UG lecturer’s contract with just five months remaining on the contract– evil? So for me, there was no choice – the 2015 election was a question of do or die. But all through the campaign, there was no question in my mind that I had very little in common with the ideological essence of the two parties – APNU and AFC. I am philosophically committed to the expansion and growth of the labouring masses. I believe the economics of power should be devoted to the elevation of that class of citizens. I didn’t delude myself into thinking that such economics would be the essence of the APNU-AFC Government. I can recall I made one promise at a meeting in Bagotstown. There was a large attendance and when I was speaking some women shouted that they needed house lots. Over the mike, I told them I would see that they get house lots once the opposition wins. I don’t know who they are, and would not be able to recognize them. There is a second reason, and perhaps the more fundamental of the two, I don’t think we have political parties in Guyana that are philosophically driven by deep working class empathy, therefore I know that whether it is PPP or WPA or AFC or PNC, there will be extensive concessions to the better off classes that will not be extended to the labouring masses. No post-colonial government has been a working class one except Cuba but Cuba mixed working class elevation with psychotic state violence and semi-fascist dictatorship. Ironically, the working classes in certain capitalist countries with liberal, right wing governments have fared far better than in the post-colonial Third World. Finland, Germany and all the Scandinavian countries come to mind. This is not to say that overall the PNC, PPP, WPA, AFC and other parties will not devote money and resources to the betterment of the proletarian strata and poor peasantry, but I doubt that in 2015 onwards there will be a strategic alliance between the APNU-AFC administration and the classes at the lower tiers in the economy. Power certainly hasn’t been exercised in the favour of the masses in the Hoyte period, under Jagdeo and in the three years of Ramotar’s tenure. There is an annual Hoyte Memorial lecture. I haven’t attended any so far but would love to hear how the lecturer would look at Hoyte’s cruel anti-working class policies. If Hoyte had continued in office after 1992, there would have been a pattern opposite to what occurred in Cuba. The state would have been democratic and there would have been a plural structure of power unlike what took place under Castro. But unlike Cuba, Hoyte would have devastated the lower classes and particularly income-earners in the public service. It was under Bharrat Jagdeo that neo-liberal capitalism strangulated the working masses. Jagdeo was a frenetic supporter of trickle down economics. By the time he lost power in 2015 (yes, 2015 not 2011) Jagdeo had become the Third World’s biggest endorser of Reaganomics. In his fifteen years of power, Jagdeo aligned himself with the wealthy and super-wealthy classes of Guyana and virtually gave Guyana over to them. The only thing that trickled down to the labouring classes under Jagdeo was misery and poverty. And to think over two hundred thousand people from that class voted for Jagdeo in 2015. People can vote for their own destruction.