Freddie Kissoon - Is Mr. Jagdeo controversial or dictatorial?

Freddie Kissoon – Is Mr. Jagdeo controversial or dictatorial?

Jun 09, 2008 Freddie Kissoon

It was Ras Tom Dalgetty who argued publicly in the letter columns of the newspapers that looking at what we have for a government, it was better if the WPA had tried to work out a compromise with Burnham because the removal of the Burnham Government has led to a worse regime.

My attitude to that statement is a qualified one. I refuse for Mr. Ravi Dev to put words in my mouth. I never wrote that the Jagdeo presidency is worse than Burnham’s. I know in framing critical commentaries of an independent nature, one will be lambasted by all sides and one’s views will be distorted. It comes with the territory. One has to live with that inevitable reality.

What I have written in these columns and in letters to the editor pages of both independent dailies and have said in academic seminars at UG several times is that I have discovered four forms of state behaviour of an atrophied nature (one can use a less harsh term like, “negative”, “unacceptable”, “authoritarian”) that were not present in the regime of Forbes Burnham.

That does not mean that Mr. Jagdeo’s rule is worse when compared to the Burnham epoch. To arrive at that judgement, you have to juxtapose a multiplicity of state forms and compare each one.

My position is that there were excesses in Burnham’s Government that I do not see Mr. Jagdeo practising. Then there are authoritarian manifestations of a degenerate complexion in the present Government of Guyana that were not there when the PNC ruled this country from 1964 to 1992.

I make no apologies for this statement. I believe in this statement. I will defend this statement against any enlightened supporter of the PPP, against anyone with any type of learning. In so doing I will produce the evidence. I say here and now, let Mr. Jagdeo and me participate in what was planned, at his invitation, in August 2006 – the live television dialogue between us.

At that forum, I will argue evidentially that there are cruder, autocratic aspects of abuse of power at the present time than under Burnham. Let those intellectuals who are protectors of the PPP legacy engage me. Let Dev and others come forth. These discussions exist all over the world and we should have it in Guyana.

They can take the form of a town-hall lecture or before our high school kids or live call-in radio or television. It is not any onerous task to prove that elected dictatorship of the type we see in Russia and Venezuela has occurred in Guyana.

I prefer the description elected dictatorship to the other term, illiberal democracy. Both are fashionable terms in political theory at the moment but I believe the concept of elected dictatorship more captures the process whereby an organization came to power through a popular mandate then used state power to create an authoritarian system.

As I wrote above, three of these units should interest political theorists who are interested in studying this new phenomenon. One is Russia. The others are Venezuela and Guyana of course. One has to watch Pakistan but the lack of two thirds, parliamentary majority status by the ruling party there may prevent elected dictatorship.

The regime in Guyana does not have a two-thirds majority but Guyana’s polity is more open to autocracy than what has happened in Pakistan after the recent election.

Every day in this country, one sees the relentless march of elected dictatorship. I was amused when I heard on the tape, President Jagdeo telling the guest at the launching of the Guyana Times that he knows that he is controversial. I have a different interpretation to what controversial means.

President Jagdeo comes across as dictatorial not controversial. When one is controversial it could be for reasons of being maverick, breaking with tradition, upturning taboos, iconoclastic, revisionist, chivalrous, ultra-modern. I don’t see these traits in Mr. Jagdeo. I see old-fashioned authoritarian behaviour mixed with large doses of mediocrity.

Burnham was oligarchic but it was wrapped in brilliant cloth and played out on the chess board of conceptual complexity.

So what is the latest episode of elected dictatorship? There are two. The Guyana Government has not given its franchise for the EU to fund 39 micro-projects, all of which have to do with small NGOs wanting to do something good for their groups. This isn’t government funds. It is just that bureaucracy dictates that the Government has to give its consent. The Jagdeo Government has refused.

Well, nothing wrong with that. Governments do that all the time. But the Guyana Government refuses to tell the media and the nation why it has rejected these 39 NGOs. Secondly, everybody is running from the media about Roger Khan’s lawyer’s statement that he, Khan, had government’s permission to buy “spy equipment.”

There is a James Bond movie titled, “The spy who loved me.”