The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) earned a notorious reputation for hate speech, thuggery, terrorism and violence in its 75-year history. PPP supporters, most outrageously, attacked a school bus and injured several children – including a 13-, 14- and 15-year-old – four days after the general elections on Friday 6th March 2020.
Former President David Granger, speaking on the programme – The Public Interest – recalled that the PPP’s tradition of thuggery started with acts of arson and sabotage during its ‘Civil Disobedience’ campaign in March 1954. This was followed ten years later by the murderous Hurricane of Protest during which a school bus was bombed killing a 13-year-old schoolboy, Godfrey Teixeira, at Lusignan on 23rd March 1964, among other murders. Then, on 17th July 1973, PPP officials callously instigated innocent supporters to block the roadways to prevent the removal of ballot boxes after the elections. Two persons who scuffled with armed soldiers at No. 63 Village were killed.
The PPP’s disgraceful display of thuggery in March 2020, therefore, was true to form. The passage of the ‘No-Confidence motion’ against the APNU+AFC administration in the National Assembly on 21st December 2018 was the opportunity for protest. Three months later, and despite the administration’s agreement to demit office and face new elections, the PPP launched a three-phase campaign – including threats of physical violence by inciting supporters to “chase” government officials from their villages, mounting multiple legal challenges in the courts and insisting that the Elections Commission hold elections.
After the High Court granted an injunction on 5th March 2020 to prevent the declaration of the results for District No. 4, PPP supporters stormed the Election Commission’s command centre, bellowing at elections officials and physically confronting the police. The March thuggery aimed at intimidating the Elections Commission to prematurely conclude its work and to announce spurious results.
PPP mobs then unleashed a series of sixteen simultaneous assaults on school children, citizens and policemen on 6th March. Rioters set fire to tyres and other debris on public roads and chased unarmed policemen away while prominent PPP rabble-rousers publicly addressed the throngs in Lusignan and Mon Repos. Planned public terror was launched by mid-morning. Mobs mustered in villages in Regions Nos. 3, 4, 5 and 6. Thugs, armed with bottles, cutlasses, stones, wooden slats and metal rods.
Some who were seen drinking alcohol and, later, throwing squibs, attacked passers-by and policemen who were forced to discharge tear smoke and pellet guns. One rioter was killed and about 20 persons including three school children, five police officers and other citizens injured – mainly in Reg. No. 5 from Bush Lot Village to Cotton Tree Village, over a distance of 16 km. One rioter was shot dead after he chopped two policemen. The March thuggery caused death, destruction and damage to property to the extent that the then President issued a number of statements condemning the attacks and pleading for peace.
Mr. Granger reminded that the eminent Guyanese historian Professor Clem Seecharan had earlier written of the former PPP leader “…Dr. Jagan exploited his considerable influence among Indian sugar workers to achieve political objectives which had more to do with his control of the state than with their conditions of work.” Years after Dr. Jagan’s death, his successors still seemed committed to inflaming and inciting the masses to pursue political objectives.
The PPP’s dangerous March thuggery had the consequences of aggravating political differences, destroying public trust and eroding social cohesion in those rural communities. As one of the injured children said, ruefully: “We are innocent. No child in Guyana should [have to] go through this”. 󠄀
