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Jan 12, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Life has degrees of everything. A simple example is that the offence of pickpocket cannot be treated with the same punishment as robbery with violence. In terms of governmental misbehaviour, there are degrees of democratic violations. The extreme situation is dictatorship, whether elected or not.
Ravi Dev tried to exonerate the PPP Government from this classification by offering the standard typology from the immediate post WW2 world. Dictatorship has gone through mutational changes since theorists delineated the contours of early 20th century European autocracy
All governments misbehave. But it is stretching it far to say the blemishes of Tony Blair’s administration could be compared to Egypt under Mubarak. In Guyana, under the Jagdeo presidency, the characteristics of third world fascism were fairly pronounced as the PPP entered the 2006 elections.
To say that the PPP Government had its faults but was not an oligarchic regime was to barefacedly deny the objective reality in Guyana. Former PPP Minister, Henry Jeffrey has done just that by an exposition of what constitutes the human being’s obligation to moral values.
Writing on his defence of a particular PPP politician he likes and on his belief that the PPP will win the next election, Jeffrey descends into a chasm of moral indefensibility that is shocking to say the least. His essential adumbration is that one has a loyalty to an organization therefore one cannot openly criticize it. This was his defence of Mr. Ralph Ramkarran against the accusation of Mr. Michael Maxwell, frequent contributor to the letter pages of the two independent dailies, that Mr. Ramkarran never spoke out against the dictatorial cruelties of the Jagdeo Government.
To cushion Mr. Ramkarran from an intellectual onslaught, Jeffrey made use of the examples of great leaders who were once part of totalitarian systems and didn’t speak out. He cited Deng Xiaoping, Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Hoyte and President de Klerk of apartheid rule. In his outline, some polemical dishonesty crept into Jeffrey’s description.
First, Xiaoping did speak out against certain policies of the Communist Party of China. He was stripped of his membership, sent to a labour camp and had to wear a dunce cap. Gorbachev was humiliated in Russian elections after the fall of the USSR. In the case of de Klerk, he quit politics after South Africa was free. Hoyte was humiliated in two successive elections.
Using the examples of Jeffrey, Ramkarran should have spoken out, and if he didn’t then he will be punished at election time as happened to Gorbachev and Hoyte. What is frightening about Jeffrey’s theory is his concept of loyalty.
The only loyalty a human being has is to conscience and liberty. If he/she violates the liberty of others and participates in bestial politics, then he/she must be made to face the consequences. The starting point of that value was the Nuremberg Trial of Nazi leaders. Many of the junior officers were hanged because they carried out orders of genocide.
The tribunal did not accept that they were subordinates that had to implement instructions.
In the case of the present PPP, the cabal has followed the path of dictatorship that can easily be argued using modern typologies of authoritarian governorship. To say that when one is part of that system loyalty is an obligation to elevate moral improprieties in a shameless way. Dictatorship cannot be defended. How can you defend the extra-judicial killings of over 200 persons, the Lindo Creek massacre, use of treason against anti-government critics, the murder of Mr. Waddell, the complicity of a government in the operations of notorious, murderous cocaine merchants, the extensive kleptocratic networks that rake in billions of dollars, the pathological presence of race discrimination?
What Jeffrey may have overlooked, by error or mischief, is the fact that as recent as three years ago, Ministers in a Government were speaking out against their Prime Minister. Loyalty was of lesser importance than the sacred values of life.
I refer to the tribulations of PM Tony Blair over his decision to go to war in Iraq. Two Ministers sat in the Cabinet and disagreed with his judgement. Robin Cook resigned but Clare Short stayed in the Cabinet. She eventually left.
Mr. Ramkarran may have advised Jeffrey to stay away from future defence of his presidential bids because Jeffrey himself is not free of the very accusations Maxwell made of Ramkarran.
He stayed in the PPP Government for about seventeen years, then when pressured to leave resorted to frequent letters in the newspapers bemoaning the lack of attempts by the PPP Government of ethnic reconciliation.
So where was Jeffrey when he was a Minister for 17 years?
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