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The power of political precarity

May 17, 2014 | By | Filed Under Letters 

DEAR EDITOR, This is the plain truth. The People’s Progressive Party is afraid of elections. Indeed, it is afraid of what any referendum on its rule – quantifiable or abstract – is going to reveal, and the subsequent consequences thereof.  On a symbolic level, the inevitable loss it is facing at local government elections would further undermine the mythos of electoral invincibility within which the PPP has shrouded itself, one which has already suffered a tremendous blow with the results of the 2011 general elections. In praxis, the inevitable local government electoral loss would undermine the machinery that the party has put in place to usurp legitimate local government infrastructure to consolidate and extend its hegemony, particularly during general elections campaigning. Faced with the possibility of electoral defeat, the structures are slowly being laid down for the creation of a pre-totalitarian state.  The classic signs are there: proliferating acts of brutality by the police and the condoning or obfuscation of the same by the government; the increasing impunity with which government and ruling party apparatchiks flaunt the legal system; the attempts to muzzle the free media even as the state media is abused in the interest of the ruling party; the undermining of democratic structures and the subsequent imposition of autocratic ones; and the resistance of democratic mechanisms like local government elections. What Guyanese need to understand, a lesson that we should have learned from our previous history, is that totalitarian regimes are not abruptly thrown into existence by the flip of switch.  More often than not they are the result of the failure of a body of citizens to recognize and resist a gradual undermining of democratic systems within a particular polity. Fully invested in the myth that democracy had returned in some static and infallible form in 1992, we fell complacent, even comatose, like Rip Van Winkle, for twenty years, and awoke to our own Thirty Five Tyrants, the PPP Central Committee.  Now awake, it is time that the collective citizenry of Guyana realize the tremendous power at our disposal, the power of political precarity. I have come to realize that the defining element of any polity is precarity.  In authoritarian, oligarchic regimes, the burden of precarity – a tenuousness of existence, a perpetual existential angst – is imposed upon the average citizen.  The more democratic a polity, the more of that burden of precarity is placed upon the political leadership. For the first time since coming to power, the PPP is facing that precarity and it is afraid.  It is afraid of the empowerment and resulting autonomy of Amerindian communities; it is afraid of young people from its own strongholds articulating their disgust and discontent; it is afraid of a media free to investigate its mismanagement of taxpayer funds under its control; it is afraid of any external intervention that seeks to educate the average citizen about the mechanisms of participatory democracy; it is afraid of writers that have grown up under the shadow of its reign challenging its perjured narrative of democracy and freedom and competence. Recently, the usually reserved and demure Vincent Alexander in uncharacteristically strong language decried “the blatant misrepresentation of facts” (KN, May 15) in the government’s posturing on local government elections and the management of the Georgetown City Council.  Factual misrepresentation is of course the staple of corrupt authoritarian regimes. In his seminal 1977 essay on the dictatorship in then Czechoslovakia, VÁclav Havel made the following observation: “This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies… Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.” As a people we cannot continue to accept the lies that an increasingly desperate regime seeks to feed us to hide their increasingly palpable fear.  Like Alexander, more of us need to reach that breaking point where we refuse to facilitate these blatant attempts to deceive us. Ruel Johnson

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What Guyanese need to understand, a lesson that we should have learned from our previous history, is that totalitarian regimes are not abruptly thrown into existence by the flip of switch.  More often than not they are the result of the failure of a body of citizens to recognize and resist a gradual undermining of democratic systems within a particular polity.

 

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I have come to realize that the defining element of any polity is precarity.  In authoritarian, oligarchic regimes, the burden of precarity – a tenuousness of existence, a perpetual existential angst – is imposed upon the average citizen.

 

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In his seminal 1977 essay on the dictatorship in then Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel made the following observation: “This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies… Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.”

 

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However one looks at the Ruel Johnson article, the excerpts I highlight above do resonate with our experiences with Guyana both at home and in the Diaspora abroad. Thanks to 21st century instant digital communications the creeping tendency towards a closed society in Guyana is discernible. I don't mean closed in an East European autocratic way during the Cold War or in an African/Asian/Latin American way just after colonialism ended. No, I speak of a disguised closed society where a dominant portion of society is shut out from the offerings of the State. We see the dialog of extreme inequality that's beginning to take hold in a new Gilded-Age America. It's the difference between an educated society and one that's in the dark. I have hope in Guyana getting to the light.

 

Thanks Mits for posting this article.

Kari

Guyana is too divided for any Real Leadership to emerge. I am certain, some Black folks doan even know the names of some Kuli ministers or PPP parliamentarians. Likewise a great many Kulies doan care to know of members of the PNC or AFC-merely because they are deemed anti-PPP.

 

We are polarized. And that is a guarantee of political patronage of the PPP/PNC and now the AFC.

 

How we get out of this stranglehold should be the discussion.

 

The country is ready for a change. But who instead of which political party will the electorate endorse ? 

S

The question is how we in the Diaspora can influence change in Guyana. We do acknowledge:

  1. The Guyana polity is not one driven by normal factors of competence and interests.
  2. The main driver is a deep distrust of one race for the other.
  3. We have not yet found our great individual who can rise above it all and smash through this paradigm.

The following gives hope:

  • With technology and communications incompetence and cronyism cannot hide.
  • The demographic change can break the old racial distrust.
  • The brainpower of Guyanese can make things happen despite polluted political environment.

A leader will emerge who can coalesce common interests and shatter seemingly insurmountable barriers. This incarnation of the PPP and its less-than-stellar leadership will survive for a cycle or two, but I can see change in the coming generation's lives. History will relegate the PNC's autocratic rule and the PPP's cronyism to a footnote as a new Guyana emerges. Those who elevate these two will only end up in the dustbin of irrelevancy.

Kari

True. I was hoping it happens real soon. I am already 3 scores and ten. And for each of those years, I remember the saying, "Wan day Guyana goan get good."

 

When the spirit of the ppl are truly free, they will soar as if they have the wings of an eagle. Something to look forward to.  

S

I truly believe that one man has what it takes to bridge that divide, and that is Moses Nagamootoo. But the ad hominem  politics, driven by a polity with less vision and smarts, has made it difficult to rise outside of party politics. I  believe on the PNC side Winston Murray (who passed away) could have been a partner in that process. And with the bright private sector minds like Yesu Persaud, the Jagdeo years could have been substituted for and Guyana would have been in a different place today.

 

Moses doesn't know everything (a claim that Jagdeo and Ramotar to a lesser degree make), but he knows how to get other bright minds to move to a common higher goal. HE knows that goal, he can set that goal, he can marshall the human capital resources to help achieve that goal.

Kari

I hope so.

 

I met the man ONCE and only once.

 

We were introduced in Toronto at a Banquet (Janet, him and Kellawan Lall was being honoured at the dinner)

 

I found him to be stand-off-ish. Then again, he thought he had the Bull by the Horns. I hope he has been humbled enough-a good quality for any leader to have.

 

I was to remember, how Cheddie dealt with insignificant Indians who irated him with questions he did not wish to address.

 

I look forward to meeting the gentleman again some day.   

S
Last edited by seignet

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