Home Letters Dr David Hinds should not be so hopelessly pessimistic
Dear Editor,
Dr David Hinds’s shows on YouTube are predictable: he dutifully carries on about marginalisation and apartheid on Afro-Guyanese. On Tuesday 30/5, he was different: He talked about the decline and fall of the PNC/APNU party; of how all forces were stacked against it; how it was imploding from the inside, and how PNC members and supporters are defecting to the PPP/C; and that the PNC was hopelessly expiring.
To exorcise this hopelessness, I would suggest Dr Hinds puts on his Historian and Political Scientist Professor’s mortarboard and look back at the 1960s, when the PPP party was on the verge of being wiped out forever.
The PPP party and Dr Jagan were caught in a pincer: The foreign intelligence agencies had their operatives on the ground relentlessly fighting a weak PPP, which was shorn of any support from the Army, the Police, the Civil Service, the Trade Unions; the Media, both local and foreign; were contesting fraudulent elections in which the then Dictator Burnham allowed only 20% of Parliamentary members to the PPP; where PPP supporters could not find jobs, or obtain education.
The end result was that the PPP party disintegrated. Its wealthier and middle-class supporters left the Party, and many of them defected to the PNC. the Party had little funds to address its expenses, and its membership comprised of the few
Parliamentarians and a small number of poor, illiterate peasants.
The intelligence agencies and all others waited to witness the demise of the party, but Dr and Mrs Janet Jagan had a remarkable faith in Guyana, the Party and themselves. They had no money, except their Parliamentary pay, and had to live abstemiously. They kept working assiduously among people, and went into rigged elections well knowing they would only be allotted 20% of the members. After 28 years, the Party was intact and was ready to assume power.
Dr Hinds and the PNC’s leadership could learn from Dr Jagan: Have faith in the tiny remnants of your membership; work tirelessly among the people; in Parliament, work hard and do your research, and constructively criticize the Government’s programmes; and go into elections though you know you will lose, but it keeps the Party alive.
I hope Dr Hinds assimilates this historic example and helps to resurrect the PNC.
Yours sincerely,
Paul Validum
Ramlochan