Conversation Tree

THIRD PARTY POLITICS

A review of third parties, their roles and future, were discussed in SN’s editorial yesterday against the background of VP Jagdeo’s announcement that the PPP was ready for the challenge. A New and United Guyana (ANUG) was established in January, 2019. At the time of its establishment, it was fully aware of the history of third parties in Guyana, particularly The United Force (TUF) and the Alliance for Change (AFC), both of which had joined with the PNC/APNU to form a government, the TUF in 1964 and the AFC in 2015. It appears that Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan, leader of the AFC, was aware of the danger to the AFC’s existence of coalescing with the APNU because, prior to 2015, he expressed fears that, if it did, it would become “dead meat,” presumably acknowledging the history of the TUF. The AFC, up to the last elections, did not quite become “dead meat” but its death rattle was being heard. It is not known whether the terminal fortunes of the TUF and the AFC will influence the future of third party politics.

SEECHARAN’S OLD, ENDURING, ANTI-JAGAN NARRATIVE

The legacy of Dr. Cheddi Jagan emerges for consideration in March every year, the month of his birth and of his passing. Dr. Clem Seecharan’s book, “Cheddi Jagan and the Cold War 1946-1992,” has provoked some discussion this year. Dr. Seecharan is an historian of modest accomplishments who wrote mainly about cricket, until he was commissioned to write “Sweetening Bitter Sugar,” a work in loud praise of a colonial sugar baron, Lord (Jock) Campbell, who inherited Bookers, a sprawling conglomerate, in “Bookers” Guiana, after an inauspicious stint as a failed student playboy. Seecharan promoted Campbell as a politically liberal and a progressive business oligarch by juxtaposing him against Jagan, the implacable, dogmatic, communist idealogue who opposed the “progressive” Campbell at every turn. The story is told that Jagan’s “communism” led to his own downfall and disaster for Indians. Seecharan is a prominent purveyor of this old, enduring, anti-Jagan narrative which survives among, and is propagated by, a small group of Indian professionals.

MEDIATING A STRIKE BY JUDICIAL ORDER

The Civil Procedure Rules provide that a Court may, on its own initiative, order any or all parties to a proceeding to participate in a mediation. This is the first high profile court-ordered mediation and it involves the Government and a major trade union, the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU), which is engaged in an nation-wide strike of teachers. Two distinguished lawyers, Edward Luckhoo and Robin Stoby, both Senior Counsel of long standing, have been appointed by Justice Sandil Kissoon to mediate between the Government and the GTU. The proposal for mediation was resisted by Attorney General Anil Nandlall. He argued that there was no dispute, that the parties had met in January and had scheduled another meeting for February, but the GTU had called the strike before the date of the meeting. The Judge nevertheless made the order for the mediation.

GROUND ZERO

I was very much tempted this weekend to write about Devils, Bastards and Demons – the words used by self-styled ‘Elder’ and promoter of moral revivalism, former PNC ‘strongman,’ Prime Minister Hamilton Green. He was speaking at the Burnham Foundation’s commemoration of the 101^st anniversary of Burnham’s death at the Critchlow Labour College and describing those who today hold political office. According to reports, Green said that the people who deserve to rule are those whose “ancestors…suffered for centuries without a cent.” He said that ‘we’ (himself and others of like mind, no doubt) welcomed the ‘indentured people,’ ‘gave them an education’ and Burnham sought to unite the people, but the ‘new’ Indians were a larger group and didn’t want that. Whatever conditionality Green may have expressed, he called for rigged elections to remove the ‘devils, bastards and demons.’ Green obviously felt that the occasion was an appropriate one to advocate those particular views. He cannot disguise with moral philosophy a deeply backward mentality capable of rising to the surface at any moment, in a gush of political and racist drivel.

THE TEACHERS’ STRIKE

It can hardly be denied that the public servants, including teachers, deserve to be paid more. It can also be hardly denied that public servants, including teachers, have come a long way since the collapse of the Guyana economy during the 1970s. Long before 1980 Guyana’s economy had been consistently in decline, exacerbated by the rise in oil prices and the decline in the price of sugar on the world market in the 1970s. The decline continued unaddressed until Burnham passed and Hoyte became President in 1985. Hoyte immediately negotiated a recovery programme with the IMF, which Burnham had refused to do on the ground of the harsh conditionalities. Among those accepted were devaluation and a wage and salary freeze. Between 1987 and 1991 the Guyana dollar was devalued from $19.50 to $101.75 for US$1. As a result of these harsh measures, middle level public servants, who owned their own homes and cars, joined the ranks of the impoverished. The poor descended into extreme poverty. While public servants, including teachers, have substantially recovered from that era, the overhang of debilitating IMF conditionalities still remain.