THE REAL NARRATIVE
October 29, 2013, By KNews, Filed Under Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source
Not all forms of political revisionism are deliberate. A great many distortions of history occur because one narrative is superimposed on another, one interpreted under the light of the other, even though the contexts may have been totally different and distinct.
The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) did not move into critical support because of instructions from the Socialist International.
That body’s position however may have had some influence. Critical support is not a unique concept and was not unique when the PPP embraced it.
All opposition parties today in Guyana can be said to embrace critical support. Critical support simply means that you support the government when merited without comprising your fundamental role as an opposition party to offer criticism and alternatives to government programmes.
In the case of the PPP of 1975, critical support, however, had a special ring and was distinguished by the line adopted by the PPP after the rigged elections of 1973.
After those elections, the PPP would not have been taken seriously if it had simply licked its wounds and crawled back into parliament. The PPP boycotted parliament after the 1973 elections and announced a policy of non-cooperation.
The leader of the PPP, Dr Cheddi Jagan, was a keen observer of the dynamic international politics and he obviously saw merit in supporting the entrenchment of a socialist economy in Guyana, even though it was obvious that he had a fundamental difference as regards the vehicle of cooperatives.
He saw cooperatives not as the means to socialism, but of a practical mechanism which would emerge within a socialist society to allow for the participation of the Guyanese people.
So there was, in the adoption of critical support, a strategic ideological element.
But far more dominant was the reality that non-cooperation under a repressive regime like the PNC was tantamount to ineffectiveness.
Non-cooperation was not taking the PPP any place and therefore it saw an advantage in a dynamic international environment to return to parliament and choosing critical support as a means of holding Burnham to his announced policy adumbrated in the Declaration of Sophia.
Talks between the PPP and the PNC soon encountered hurdles, and for all intents and purposes, no political rapprochement was possible as a result of the PPP’s embrace of critical support.
By the time the late seventies came around, the economy was in deep crisis and there was industrial unrest in both the bauxite and sugar sectors; the middle class was being affected by the hardships that were unleashed in that period and by the rampant corruption of the day.
It is in this context, that the PPP advanced its suggestion of a National Patriotic Front government.
The suggestion of a united front was not about ethnic reconciliation; it was about finding a solution to the deepening crisis in the country by a broad-based government which, however, had to be comprised of political parties that were anti-imperialist and socialist.
The PPP wanted the PNC as part of the National Patriotic Front government but the Working People’s Alliance buoyed by the massive crowds it was pulling at its meetings and rallies was opposed to the PNC being part of the equation. That position also had nothing to do with ethnic reconciliation.
Five years after the assassination of Rodney, Burnham found himself isolated both internally and externally.
The latter was in the main due to his position on the invasion of Grenada which caused the Ronald Regan administration to place serious manners on him, including exclusion from the Caribbean Basin Initiative.
Elections were due in 1985 and Burnham needed political space.
He made an offer, as usual insincere, about talks and unity. The PPP had no option but to engage in exploratory talks.
The fact of the matter is that unlike what is being peddled, the talks never went anywhere and nothing concrete was ever agreed upon, even though a committee that was formed had drawn up a model of a unity government.
Burnham never got around to consummating anything and Hoyte had no time to waste with this and so it was relegated to the wastebasket.
After the 1985 elections, the most incompetently rigged elections in Guyana, the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy (PCD) was formed by the opposition political parties, including the Working People’s Alliance, the PPP and the Democratic Labour Movement.
The sole purpose of the PCD was not again anything to do with national or ethnic reconciliation. It was about fighting for free and fair elections.
As the 1992 elections drew near, the PCD opted to examine the question of a joint slate.
The WPA took a position based on its understanding of how the African segment of the population viewed Cheddi Jagan. It was opposed to Dr. Jagan as the PCD’s consensus candidate, even though Cheddi Jagan was the most popular political figure in the country, and his party was expected to bring the largest number of votes to the PCD.
The WPA along with GUARD and the bourgeoisie class engaged in mischief and tried to foist a consensus candidate on the PCD. One of the most understated and understudied position; is the role that was played by certain prominent business persons in pushing the PPP away from a position that was agreed upon.
The PNC, of course, had promoted division with the PCD by throwing out a proposal for National Dialogue. The WPA became smitten by this proposal, but this alone, not self-interest, was the reason for its support of a caretaker government.
While the party may have seen this as a backdoor ticket to sharing in a post-1992 government, it had come around then to the view that the PNC could not be excluded from the process of economic reconstruction.
All of the aforesaid proposals – critical support, the National Patriotic Front government, the PCD consensus candidate and the caretaker government proposals – had nothing to d with ethnic reconciliation which only became an issue, as it always does, when the PPP wins an election.