During our discourse on his Politics 101 last Tuesday, Dr. David Hinds raised the issue of the People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP) current drive to establish its own ‘African’ organisations and the possibility of its being successful. Of course, the histories of both the PPP and PNC have demonstrated that cobbling a few of the other ethnicities under your banner cannot constitute group representativeness in any meaningful manner and may merely draw attention to the deficiency. For some time, I have been arguing that since the resignation of Janet Jagan in 1999, the PPP, recognising that it is all but impossible – even when it had a small majority support base – for it to democratically rule a bicommunal ethnic society such as Guyana without making important political concessions, has opted for the undemocratic pathway of establishing ethnic/political dominance in Guyana similar to what is taking place in Israel.
Its methodology for achieving this goal has been to keep Africans in a position that will sooner or later force them to migrate or join the PPP, then we will live happily together under PPP’s ethnic leadership. By the 2011 national and regional elections, largely because of the electoral strategy adopted by the People’s National Congress (PNC), its leadership appeared irreparably compromised and weak, and the PPP, having convinced itself and many others, trotted around Guyana as if its goal of dominance had already been accomplished. The 2006 elections were the last it won!
The drive by the PPP to undermine African solidarity is not new but its electoral losses, the growing awareness of its domineering intentions among Africans and the fact that the world has changed significantly over the relevant period and today the major global struggle is between democracy and autocracy, make destabilisation more difficult to accomplish and less useful. However, since the PPP still does not intend to follow the available democratic pathway, it has now dropped the subtleties, hoping that its main rival will be similarly politically myopic thus creating an Israeli type of fait accompli that will keep it in office.
The African community has usually been more politically open than the Indian community. Add to this some six decades of PPP propaganda that falsely demonized Forbes Burnham and the PNC as racists who opportunistically joined with international capital to deny the ‘nationalist democratic socialist’ Cheddi Jagan and the PPP their democratic right to rule, and two decades – since Janet Jagan was driven from office – of trying to undermine African solidarity, and African Guyanese unity appears even more fragile. This narrative of the PPP needs to be confronted in the interest of developing a national ethnic rapprochement.
The quarrel between Forbes Burnham and the Jagans began the moment they attempted to change the conditions of Burnham’s recruitment, but this and the other such intervening disputes need not detain us here. In his ‘The West on Trial’ Cheddi Jagan claimed that it was not the PPP but the largely middle class United Democratic Party (UDP) that later in coalition with Burnham to form the PNC, that first began calling upon Africans to ‘vote for your race (apan jaat)’ once Burnham had joined the ranks of the PPP. Of course, racial mobilization existed long before the formation of the PPP, but it became more important as independence approached and was used by both parties.
However, upon taking government Burnham became focused on creating a ‘One Guyana.’ While on my assessment Cheddi and Janet Jagan were not racists, for a generation the PPP in opposition had nothing else but racist propaganda with which to motivate and hold its supporters. The usual PPP posture on the moral political high-ground has no legs. Except for the short period before Cheddi Jagan died, the history of the PPP is one of attempts to establish illiberal regimes. Yet, over the years it has been able to hoodwink its Indian base and a significant number of Africans, even though many of the latter, largely for ethnic reasons, do not vote for it.
As noted above, PPP’s propaganda tends to present it as a ‘national democratic party’ thwarted in its efforts to develop and bring real freedom to the Guyanese people by the imperialists and their national allies such as the PNC, United Force, etc. But is this true and what is the nature of this freedom? Let the PPP speak for itself.
‘1. The purpose of this letter is to outline the political situation in British Guiana and the role of the People’s Progressive Party and to solicit aid on behalf of the Party. 2. The Imperialists are now actively engaged in exploring potential mineral resources. The British plan to federate most of the British West-Indian islands and British Guiana into a glorified Crown Colony. … British Guiana will therefore most likely play the leading role in any future development of the Caribbean Area and in the future federation. As such a strong militant party in British Guiana is vitally necessary. 3. The balance of power in the Executive Committee of the party is with the communists. 4. To fight for and to preserve peace is also to fight the imperialists at their weak points – the colonies. … The second reason for urgency is the fact that our party will face a general election in 1952/55. To strengthen the party … however some financial assistance is required. (Cheddi Jagan, 1951 letter to the Communist International, SN: 11/04/2023).’
It is said that the only occasion on which liberal democracy is bad is when, like in Adolf Hitler’s Germany, it is intended to end democracy and here we have the Jagans intending to subvert liberal democracy and introduce Soviet type dictatorship of the proletariat not only in Guyana but in the entire English-speaking Caribbean! International communism has gone but as elsewhere, its dictatorial instincts are very much alive in the form of the PPP’s wish to establish ethnic/political dominance in Guyana.
With this kind of history, the PPP can only win over a significant number of Africans if the PNC, even strategically, sits on its laurels and allows it to do so. That said, the PNC is yet to convince me that it understands the nature, vicissitudes, and possibilities for democracy in this third decade of the 21st century.
