There was a time in Guyana when political leaders on the campaign trail focused on their major threat. There was a time when there were two major political parties, the People’s Progressive Party and the People’s National Congress. The other parties were incidental. The People’s Progressive Party was the target of the People’s National Congress. Similarly, the PPP targeted the PNC.
Forbes Burnham paid special attention to the Working People’s Alliance under the leadership of Walter Rodney when the WPA decided to challenge the PNC. One has been taken back to the days of Burnham and Walter Rodney. Burnham saw Rodney as a threat and unleashed every possible mechanism against him and the members of the WPA.
But the WPA wasn’t passive. It fought back. There was the fire that destroyed the office of the PNC on Camp Street. There were the guns smuggled into the country and blistering attacks by Rodney. One memorable comment from Rodney was that Burnham was the opposite of King Midas.
He reminded his audience that everything Midas touched turned to gold. Burnham, he said, was the opposite. Everything he touched turned to human excrement—and it was not said in such printable language.
Today, Azruddin Mohamed who has launched his presidential campaign is the target of the PPP. He is being described as evil personified. Irfaan Ali claims that Azruddin Mohamed is not a threat to the PPP but the attacks against him suggest otherwise.
On Tuesday he was described as a threat to Guyana in many ways. A lobbying firm hired by the government at a cost of US$50,000 per month has come out with a statement that Mohamed is a surrogate of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Maduro has laid claim to a sizeable portion of Guyana.
Irfaan Ali has added a spin to this allegation. He claims that because of the sanction imposed by the US government Azruddin is a multi-faceted threat. He is a threat to the financial system; a threat to diplomacy and a threat to every possible facet of national life.
He has also done something that Burnham did to Rodney. Burnham targeted meetings held by Rodney. People said to be policemen in plainclothes would descend on the meetings with batons and beat those in attendance.
In short, he broke up meetings of the WPA. The PPP has done the same thing to Azruddin’s meetings. Recently, it was reported that busloads of the ten-day workers descended on a meeting on the west side and disrupted the meetings. For an individual who is no threat to the PPP, Mohamed is attracting a lot of attention. He was prevented from visiting an Amerindian community.
The icing on the cake was the decision to challenge the symbol that Azruddin used for his political campaign. He had selected a jaguar. Suddenly challenges came from people aligned to the government. The jaguar had been used as a party symbol before. Ravi Dev, who was an unapologetic advocate for East Indians, used it as the symbol for his party—Rise Organise and Rebuild. There were no objections.
Mohamed’s woes were multitudinous. The government took him to court to seize his vehicles on the grounds that he undervalued the cost of the vehicles. That has not gone according to plan but that has not stopped the drive to get Mohamed before the court.
Recently, there was talk of pursuing charges against him for the murder of Ricardo Fagundes. In the early days of the killing, a policeman came forward with what he said was his evidence. He faced a push back from the government and ended up being sued by the Mohameds.Now this issue is being revisited.
The heightened interest in Azruddin Mohamed leaves one to wonder at the increased attention. Neither the leader of the PNCR nor any other political party that has emerged to contest the elections has attracted as much attention as Azruddin Mohamed.
Things get a little more interesting from the point of view of the elections commission. It would seem that the Guyana Elections Commission has taken a stand to discriminate against the smaller political parties.In the past every party contesting the elections would be presented with hard copies of the preliminary voters’ list. Not so this time around.
The commission has decided that only the two major parties would be provided with hard copies.Not the Alliance For Change, not any of the other parties will have hard copies. These smaller parties say that they need these copies to verify that their candidates are on the list. They say that electronic copies would not make their tasks easier.
It would seem that the Guyana Elections Commission is not taking the smaller political parties seriously. It probably knows something that the leaders of these parties do not.
