Aung San Suu Kyi and the personalities in Guyanese politics
Kaieteur News – Fareed Zakaria has featured an article from the journal “Foreign Affairs” by Sebastian Strangio (“The Myanmar Mirage: Why the West got Burma Wrong”) in which Strangio made the following statement: “Hidden from view were the prejudices and proclivities that Aung San Suu Kyi shared with many of her fellow ethnic Burmans, as well as a character that tended toward apparent rigidity and intolerance of criticism…“[by] 2018, it was apparent that Western observers didn’t know Aung San Suu Kyi as well as they once might have imagined.”
In her long years of struggle against military rule, Suu Kyi became an international hero coveting the Nobel Peace Prize. Then her party took power and the lady we saw as a global icon revealed her true colours. She became a brazen defender of the same military that imprisoned her for long years. She defended the massacre of Burmese Muslims from a position of racist instincts.
Which country Suu Kyi reminds you of? Which political personalities do Suu Kyi reminds you of? Power does ugly, sickening, insane things to people that before they acquired it, you thought of them as special, good humans that the world does not produce often.
On reading Zakaria’s highlighting of Strangio’s psycho-political depiction of Suu Kyi, vivid, compelling thoughts of Guyanese politics and its preeminent actors were rushing all over me. As the thoughts consumed me, I went straight to the keyboard and composed this column before I forgot what I wanted to convey.
One of the vicious trends in politics, especially in the late 20th century is that dictatorial power brings into being activists with crusading energy that mask their ugly minds and excessive taste for power. Someone long, long ago once told me that there are men who joined the Catholic priesthood not out of religious convictions but hidden sexual choices.
The person had no anti-homosexual feelings whatsoever. He just felt that he knew what was factual. I believe him. In believing him it doesn’t mean you are anti-homosexual. It is the same in politics. There are humans out there who want power, who want to taste the power that goes with being a prime minister or president. There is no deep desire to transform their country or leave a legacy.
So many names we can cite but space would not allow for an expanded discussion but Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Alexis Tsipras of Greece are two examples from current politics that come to mind. Sarkozy never had any intention of being a transformational president. He just wanted five years of power. Tsipras was enamoured with being the prime minister and was quite happy to enjoy it for the few years he had it knowing full well he would not be re-elected.
So many names are pouring out of my head in Guyana but the images of four of them are in my face right now. Three of them are Rupert Roopnaraine, Khemraj Ramjattan and Raphael Trotman. All three had extensive state power as ministers. The fourth is Eusi Kwayana. He didn’t have ministerial status but he displayed the deep Freudian underpinnings that Suu Kyi has – the embrace of ethnic belonging.
I have written much on Kwayana and can hardly think of anything new about his character. But this I will briefly say – we in and out of Guyana had not even a fleeting comprehension of how extensive the race stamp on his mind was. He probably figured at his age (96) it was time to bring out what he always nourished in his psyche – that Guyana should have a Black government ruling it whether by free election or not.
Rupert Roopnaraine’s power behaviour was as shocking to me as Kwayana’s descent into tribalism. I met Dr. Roopnaraine when he returned to Guyana in 1976 at which time I was in my second year as a UG student. He never impressed me as a revolutionary that can lose himself among the masses. His class elitism was too graphic and vain.
Despite what I knew of his relationships with many top personnel in Forbes Burnham’s government, it came as an unbelievable shock when in parliament, he voted against the release of the report of the commission of Inquiry into Walter Rodney’s assassination. Finally, Trotman and Ramjattan. Both of these gentlemen fooled the entire world. Not one Guyanese can look into the mirror and say that they weren’t surprised at the excessive intoxication with power that these two men displayed after they became the recipient of huge authority in 2015. In a Foreign Affairs article, the author refers to the end of Suu Kyi. In Guyana there is the end of Roopnaraine, Trotman, Ramjattan and Kwayana. What a tragedy.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
