Guyana Observer News

The political awakening of East Indian intellectuals

Sunday, 16 August 2009

One of the common arguments against the theory of Thomas Hobbes (17th century English philosopher) is that humans cannot be all that insecure, selfish and fearful as he made them out to be. If human existence were predicated on those instincts, civilization could not have gone forward. There are millions and millions of untold and published stories of fantastic love of human beings for each other and the flow of generosity in human society. This writer has been the recipient of other human being’s assistance to him that has made him a better person than when he started out as a poverty-stricken youth in Wortmanville. Human beings are essentially and fundamentally decent people who are inclined to live and let live and are predisposed to seeing that we endure this life in a better world. Once people are decent, they will show concern and consideration for the human condition. My theorizing on elected dictatorship in this country is that its consolidation and continuation will depend on the extent to which East Indians willingly support the terror that inheres in the political culture of the PPP.
My theory on the ethnic basis of dictatorship in Guyana is very old and has been shaped by Guyanese academics much more learned than I am. I have learnt from these scholars’ erudition. From 1970, when Burnham manhandled the pension issue of the bauxite workers after nationalization and police brutalized them, African Guyanese began to look at Burnham with continued suspicion. Once African awakening had occurred, the tyranny of Burnham had to collapse. It is simple science. If your car is propped up on a wooden plank and pranksters remove it, the car will tumble. The Burnham regime’s authoritarian survival depended on ethnic solidarity. The WPA dissolved that fulcrum.
If the PPP is going to stay in power and destroy both the economy and social structure of Guyana, it can only do so with the patronage of the Indian population. Once Indians emulate their African counter-parts in the seventies and defect from the dictatorial agenda, the plank will weaken and elected dictatorship will fall.
I have spoken to scores of powerful African rights activists and I urged patience. I told them that the PPP is so hopeless that Indians will have their day of apocalypse. The sense of moral revolt is occurring among Indians. Many decent Indians must have been shocked at Varshnie Singh’s sorrow. An untold number of Indians must find the mountains of unspeakable corruption unimaginable. There are Indians who accept that if the race thing against African-Guyanese continues, it will sink all of us no matter how much we like to think that it is “we” government that is in charge.
Learned Indians whose intellect is now being put in the service of the ordinary folks are multiplying and they are expressing their rejection of elected dictatorship in their country. This should augur well for the future as we countdown to elections in 2011.
There is Arif Bulkan. He did an excellent analysis of the nature of petty tyranny under Mr. Jagdeo published in the Stabroek News. He showed where the Constitution was violated when twelve Bills passed by Parliament were not assented to by Mr. Jagdeo. Mr. Bulkan teaches law at UWI. There is Sasenarine Persaud. He is a real person living abroad that features regularly in the letter pages of the two independent dailies. Mr. Persaud in a letter to this newspaper (Aug 12) wrote; “I have held my peace for 10 years and enough is enough. “ Mr Persaud observed that; “…as a society, we are going through some of our worse days as suspicion among our people abound. Mr. Persaud is best known for his trenchant exposure of the low carbon propaganda.
Janet Bulkan has or is nearing completion of a doctorate in forestry. Ms. Bulkan has intellectually devastated the low carbon strategy of President Jagdeo. It needed a technical mind that was learned and penetrating to expose the unworkability of this low carbon bandwagon. Ms. Bulkan has done it with scholarly precision. No one who has read her voluminous critics of the LCDS of Mr. Jagdeo will ever see Mr. Jagdeo’s low carbon points in the same way. It is clear from reading Bulkan, this country has nothing to collect in December.
Dr. Tarron Khemraj is constantly exposing “dankey kart” economics and jumbie planning in Guyana. Dr. Khemraj showed economic downslide was occurring long before Macbeth’s witches came to Georgetown with their weapons of “mo fyaah, slo fyaah.” Finally, the learned UN expert, Dr. Bertie Ramcharran, like Mr. Persaud, has had enough with elected dictatorship. He is opening Indian eyes too.

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