When I was a young boy, British soldiers swarmed our home, brutally slammed young men playing ball in the backyard, threw them like garbage into the back of Army trucks, took them to an isolated area at the back of the village where they beat them to a pulp. This was all part of the conspiracy to overthrow Cheddi Jagan and the People’s Progressive Party Government. Several years later, still as a teenager, I witnessed many people in Albion deprived of their votes, some told they had died, others told they had voted already, as the People’s National Congress (PNC) brutally installed a dictatorship. Ever since, I go to bed praying for my country, in the same way I pray for my family and my friends. Routinely I pray for democracy in my country because I fervently believe that with freedom and democracy our people will craft a destiny that can bring alive Eldorado.
Without democracy, the future of our nation is bleak and dark. The period 1964 to 1992 stands as a stark example of the under-development that dictatorship guarantees. Even black gold, oil, cannot save us in a dictatorship. Unfortunately, the prevailing winds emanating out of Congress Place and from the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) are ominous, howling, swirling, rattling the foundations of democracy in Guyana. In just two years, APNU/AFC, with its autocratic DNA deeply rooted in the PNC, has stymied democratic practices and rattled democratic institutions. The foundations of our democracy are under threat, none more so than the infrastructure that provides for a free and fair election – the Guyana Elections commission (GECOM) – and our Parliament.
This week there have been two blatant attacks, first on GECOM and, second, on Parliament that must not escape our attention and we must not underestimate because they represent an unrelenting drive towards dictatorship. No matter what our ethnicity, culture, religion, past and present political leanings, rich or poor, professional or labourer, we should all be dismayed, but committed to resist this reckless embrace of dictatorship. For a brief moment we need to put aside our differences and together resist another period of dictatorship in our country. The unity that stopped dictatorship in 1992 is needed again to nip in the bud this new effort to return Guyana to pre-1992.
The first attack this week occurred when President Granger elevated the obstructionist policies of APNU/AFC by informing the Leader of the Opposition that he has officially rejected the list of nominees for the chair of GECOM. This is the second list he has rejected, even though both list were totally within the spirit and letter of the Constitution and consisted of 12 names of distinguished Guyanese citizens, chosen through extensive consultation with civil society. Both times, the excuses have been absurd, reckless, provoking and unconstitutional. The rejection is designed to take control of GECOM. Granger is determined to appoint a person who will be totally beholden to him and APNU/AFC for the purpose of rigging the 2020 elections, as the PNC did with elections in 1968, 1973, 1980, 1985 and in the referendum in 1978.
The second attack on democracy this week occurred when the Speaker of Parliament halted plans by the Economic Services Committee to conduct hearings in the sugar belt relating to the closure of sugar estates which will leave more than 10,000 people without jobs. Parliament, as a foundation of our democracy, is a place for debate and dissent – fierce, sustained, and unflinching when necessary – a place where citizens can deposit their concerns, a place where MPs can engage citizens and citizens can formally engage their MPs. At a time when not only sugar estates are being closed, but the threat of ending sugar in Guyana has become real, Parliament cannot sit still.
Both of these attacks on democratic practices and institutions by APNU/AFC leadership are grotesque abuse of power. Both are scary portent of what is coming. I diligently pray for my country, but I can hear the clanging of dictatorship roaring in the distance. Each passing day now, the roar gets louder. When Granger makes clear he intends to name his own Chair for GECOM and the Speaker deems dialogue with sugar workers and citizens not the business of Parliament, the rumblings sound too close for comfort. In the face of dictatorship, silence is the fertilizer; resistance by raising our voices is the remedy.
