Not understanding the specificity of the political

Dear Editor,
GHK Lall has declared that he does not care what others say about his daily broodings about Bharrat Jagdeo. Yet, we know from basic linguistics that speech and writing cannot be monological, meaning they are not uni-directional. On the contrary, the structure of communication is dialogical, that is, an endless back and forth among speakers. It is in this context that I address GHK Lall. Put differently, we know you care what others say, which is why you say you do not care!
I noted a few days ago that GHK Lall will fail in his central objective, which is to ruin the prestige of Bharrat Jagdeo, and the PPP/C. I offered two reasons, namely, that his reliance on race to critique the PPP/C is vacuous, and secondly, that he has an acutely underdeveloped understanding of the carefully configured working relationship between President Irfaan Ali and Vice President Jagdeo. I would now like to add a third reason for Lall’s immanent and imminent failure.
The third issue takes us deep into political theory, in this instance the work of Carl Schmitt. The work of this German theorist is at once brilliant and controversial. Let us get straight down to business. The key insight of Schmitt is that politics is about power. Unlike other public institutions such as the church or trade unions that revolve around trust, salvation, negotiation, and cooperation, the raison d’être of politics is to defeat the opponent. Schmitt frames politics as an existential struggle (in the political sense) between ‘friend’ and ‘enemy.’
Here is Schmitt – Every religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other anthesis transforms into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to friend and enemy. Note that ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’ are conceptual categories employed to build a theory of the political. Friend and enemy do not have plural forms because they are logical constructs, not sensuous entities with subjectivities. Put differently, the contestation between friend and enemy is about the Logic of Power. This is what GHK Lall fails to apprehend.
His writings are mostly about how nice Irfaan Ali or Bharrat Jagdeo should be to the other side. He cringes when Jagdeo critiques the political ‘enemy’ even in response to attacks against the PPP/C that are patently unfounded, or intentionally untruthful. GHK Lall wants the PPP, Irfaan Ali, and Bharrat Jagdeo to be – shall we say, ‘ecumenical.’ In fact, he takes his theological thinking so far that he believes he himself has divine insights. Mr Lall is so naive about politics, about the specificity of the political, that he thinks he can simply throw his own hat in the ring, just like that. He has indicated that he feels he has a calling and a following!
Guyana is going through a period of rapid change, transformational as President Ali has said. One of the downsides of the rapid economic transformation is the emergence of forms of malignant opportunism to flourish. Just look at Melinda Janki pontificate nonsense on Newsmakers and you will know what I mean. Same for some of the columns in the mainstream broadsheets.
While we do not have an economic crisis in Guyana, we do have an intellectual one. People who have no training in politics or in the political economy of development and underdevelopment have suddenly become talking head experts. Most don’t understand the specificity of the political. The political is not about God; it is about the constitution of legitimate power and authority. This is true, response or no response.

Sincerely,
Dr Randolph
Persaud