Hinds ‘Sight with Dr. David Hinds - May 8, 2016
One of the problems of post-colonial politics in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia is the dictatorial manner in which the leaderships have treated with power. They generally, with some modifications, continued the authoritarian form of governance inherited from colonialism. In the process, they never learned how to even-handedly deal with dissent. It meant that the people have spent a lot of their energies fighting off authoritarian governments.
In some countries there have been periods of respite when the viciousness of the state and government was brought under relative control. No so in Guyana. Except maybe for a short period under Desmond Hoyte, we have spent our independence living under the heels of bad governments. The PPP government of 1957-64, with its agenda of ethnic domination, facilitated the rise of the PNC dictatorship, which so badly over-reached that it allowed space for the PPP to in 1992 resume its sinister agenda in the name of democracy. By the time the PPP was finished with Guyana in 2015 we had become the most authoritarian State in the Anglophone Caribbean and one of the most vicious in the world.
Enter the APNU+AFC government. After 60 years of bad governance, there was an electoral revolt by half of the population that brought the Coalition to power. Many of us from the radical tradition gave the government our blessings. One party with a radical history, the WPA, is actually a junior partner in the government. We support the government, not for racial reasons as President Ramotar thinks but because we think it offers the best opportunity to put a brake on authoritarian governance. One-party governments had ruined Guyana, so a multi-party government with its inherent checks and balance was seen as an alternative.
For me, it is the first time that I can say that I support a government in my country. I knew that we were placing power in the hands of people some of whom have for the most part had little or no history of struggle and no proper political upbringing. In fact many of them had demonstrated little understanding of politics and of the country in general. There is very little ideological grounding; what passes for ideology is often a simplistic regurgitation of the latest political jingle.
This is always a political dilemma for us. The political parties create a political class of people; the only qualification to be a part of that class is to be a party member or a friend of the party. This is not to say that the political class has no virtues. To the contrary they bring a lot to the table. They bring access to resources and skills, which in the modern political world are important ingredients of governance. In the case of this Coalition, many of the leaders bring a level of patriotism and decency that were absent in the immediate past government. One hopes that these qualities will, in the final analysis, overcome the weaknesses. This is the chance the country always has to take.
This past week, my confidence that this government has what it takes to overcome its weaknesses was somewhat shaken. Even though I was disappointed by the Ministerial salary hike and the many missteps this past year, my confidence was not shaken. For me, they did not amount to political sins. But the statement emanating from the AFC this past week troubles me, not because it was directed at me personally, but because it betrays a political mind-set that we have been fighting off for sixty years. If the Coalition government goes the way of previous governments, that AFC statement would go down as the first warning sign.
That press statement stinks of political arrogance and power drunkenness, which are key ingredients of the authoritarian mindset. It is for that reason that the leadership of that party has to be scrutinized and checked. I have a sense which faction of the party wrote that statement, but since the others have not distanced themselves from it, they all, including those who I consider to be up-full, must bear responsibility for the authoritarian intent therein.
In that statement, the AFC, whose ranks are littered with people who never lifted a finger in the fight for freedom, told Guyana that they are in the business of sharing out freedom. The party targeted me, but the message to the country is clear. The AFC has its usefulness and many strengths, but on the matter of the fight for freedom they have no history or credibility. In my 40 years of political activism I can count on the fingers of one hand those in the AFC leadership who I saw on the frontlines in the struggle in defence of and for freedom in Guyana. When many of us were being bashed, beaten, jailed and killed fighting for freedom, these people were nowhere to be seen. To paraphrase CLR James—what do they know of the fight for freedom who only freedom know?
There are people in the AFC’s short history who stood up to be counted, who were in the trenches, who know what the fight for freedom is and who are worthy of the positions they hold. My remarks are not directed at them. They are directed to those who we took a chance with in 2015 in the interest of the country. We knew that many of them lacked proper political upbringing. We knew that there was a preoccupation with office and prestige. We knew that there were vestiges of the old middle class chauvinism in the party’s ranks. We overlooked the fact that the party’s rhetoric of new politics was a contradiction of the old politics of holding on to parliamentary seats that belonged to other parties. We knew that when we were on the streets after the 2015 elections protesting the stealing of those elections, the AFC, having secured its “quota of seats.” told us to get off the streets.
Is the AFC succumbing to the poison of power? The party has never embraced resistance as a legitimate form of political expression. No wonder they boast of the No-Confidence motion; they actually believe that that is what brought the PPP to its knees. So since they initiated it, they won freedom for us. Consequently, they could now decide who enjoys it and who does not. That narrow reading of history, if not checked, would lead Guyana right back to the dark days of dictatorship. It is not Joe Harmon and the PNC who publicly told David Hinds that he should be glad that they afford him freedom of speech; it’s the AFC. That is instructive. It says to us that the new is not always better. It says to us that that party is fast becoming power drunk.
The AFC sees it fit to use their power to attack and threaten David Hinds, but have not used it to recover a single cent of the public assets stolen by the PPP cabal. They have not used their power to push for justice for Courtney Crum Ewing and the many who were murdered by state and para-state forces over the last few decades. They have not issued press releases against the merchants of death that still stalk Guyana. They have not attacked the clear censorship and political bullying in the State-owned media. They stopped hollering at the PPP once they got the throne that the PPP had. They have not used their power to stand up for the dignity of street-vendors, the poor and the powerless.
The Guyanese people have to stand in the way of the AFC triggering a return to the cruel politics of pre-2015. I want this Coalition Government to work, but I am not willing to pay the price the AFC is asking. It was our poetic voice of resistance, Martin Carter, who in one of his most potent Poems of Resistance said the following: “No! I will not still my voice! / I have too much to claim.”
More of Dr. Hinds ‘writings and commentaries can be found on his YouTube Channel Hinds’ Sight: Dr. David Hinds’ Guyana-Caribbean Politics and on his website www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com. Send comments to dhinds6106@aol.com
