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Jul 07, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Kaieteur News – Over 60 percent of Guyana’s population was not born when Mr. Mike McCormack formed the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) 45 years ago. Mr. McCormack has headed that entity since then.
In this country, you will win any bet if you put your money on persons who have achieved more than 30 years in their respective organisation giving up their leadership. In the Trade Union Congress, Public Service Union and the Olympic Association, the leaders have gone beyond 30 years in office.
There are many more like them. McCormack is an exception. Chalking up over 40 years as the leading person in any organisation is the complete shutting out of younger talent. Why do persons in this country want to lead their organisation for over 30 years?
There is no space in a column to analyse this psychological anomaly but the obvious factor at work is the factor that existed since pre-colonial times and is not likely to go away anytime soon although with a vast young population that Guyana has that motif may not survive.
The answer is power. There is a deep, psychic gravitation to power that resides in the Guyanese nationality. It is ubiquitous. It exist everywhere – business, politics, social associations, trade unionism, etc. Once an organisation is formed, the head person wants to stay on indefinitely.
Here is how the AFC’s constitution approaches power. The operative word is “may.” The constitution states that the leader “may” not seek a third term. The AFC was founded by two lawyers. Do you think the word “may” was accidental? It was deliberately left as a grey area so that the incumbent can run for as many terms as he wants because the constitution did not say “cannot” but “may not.”
Unless the power mentality is dissolved in the psychic make-up of those who aspire to achieve social status in Guyana, we are going to have persons permanently leading their organisation until they die.
Who or what is the GHRA. It was founded in the era of the anti-Burnham movement from the 70s. Like so many anti-dictatorship groups, the GHRA played no small part in opposing the demonic authoritarianism of President Forbes Burnham.
Guyana went through a psychological metamorphosis after 1992. From 1992 onwards, Guyana bore no resemblance to the epoch of Burnhamite dictatorship. Capitalism, competitive elections, television culture, private schools, foreign investments, light-complexioned values were now the norm.
What happened then is that the glorious days of the 1970s and 1980s dominated by certain organisations like the WPA and the GHRA had lost its relevance. But these entities survived. And like Guyana, they too underwent a psychological metamorphosis.
Feeling locked out of Guyana’s direction by the electoral and political domination of the PPP since 1992, organisations like the WPA and the GHRA began to embrace a subtle anti-PPP mentality. The other side of this coin is that the PPP when it came to power in 1992 seemed to have forgotten its heroic friends who helped toppled Burnham, both the WPA and GHRA included. I still think this was a terrible lapse by Cheddi Jagan.
As Guyana’s landscape kept changing, the GHRA literally faded away. Human rights causes were now taken up by the two independent dailies – Kaieteur News and Stabroek News and individuals like Mark Benschop, and organisations like trade unions.
As Guyana moved on in the 21st century, the GHRA began to fade. The GHRA fought no battles, espoused no causes, came to no one’s rescue. As poverty associated with neo-liberal economics widened, as the state became less sensitive to human rights violations best described in the words of the then Home Affairs Minister that he had so much on his plate to be bothered with torture of accused persons, the GHRA disappeared.
What happens today is that the GHRA operates in predatory mode. It stays alive if it picks on issues that give it publicity. Its main supplier of publicity is the Stabroek News (SN). For two consecutive days, the SN has given front-page (yes front-page) coverage to positions of the GHRA that are politically offensive, expressive of an anti-PPP rage and dangerously inciting. One is that it claims that the witnesses that are alleged to have lied in the Haresh Singh murder inquiry are being politically harassed. The other is a denunciation of the new anti-crime agency.
The Stabroek News was full of praise for the GHRA in its editorial yesterday. But here are the newspaper’s words about the GHRA that are insane, unbelievable and downright morally shameless, “We have a GHRA that is sufficiently alert and sufficiently non-partisan.” If the GHRA is alive and non-partisan, then trust me, Hitler is alive and living in Guyana.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
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