Yesterday, as it has done annually for 49 years, the Government spearheaded the commemoration of the attainment of Republican status through activities lumped under the rubric of “Mashramani”. As one writer reminded us in the state paper, the activity originated in Linden, where evidently they could only conceive of a “sport” to imitate the Trinidadian “Carnival”, but wanted a new name to disguise the appropriation. Even though it was claimed that the name “Mashramani” was of Amerinidan origin – meaning “celebration after a hard day’s work” – and was chosen to make the event uniquely autochthonous, no one has been able to prove that claim. Even after being exported to Georgetown the following year, and into the other regions afterwards, the blatant imitation of the Trinidad Carnival continued unabashed.
The organisers of “Mash” ignored the history of the Trinidad Carnival, which evolved out of the French European carnival tradition that was brought over to Trinidad when a number of French Planters fled Haiti after the revolution of 1891, which created the second Republic in the hemisphere. They not only brought their slaves and sugar, but Carnival – as they did to New Orleans, where it is called “Mardi Gras”. So the Republican PNC Government, while insisting that Guyana must “decolonise” its practices, did not even appreciate that Carnival was a colonial relic arising out of a rejection of Republicanism. But then, the PNC’s imitations – such as also with the “Mass Games” from Korea – were always mimicry without reflection, and inevitably tended to kitsch.
Because of its economic straits and also because of not being grounded into the centuries old Trinidadian Carnival traditions, the Guyanese Mash was always a very pale imitation, wherein vulgarity replaced wit and panache. But in the last few years, after a number of citizens had objected to the lewdness of the performers on the streets, the Government joined in calling for a clean-up of the “performances”. But, sadly, the organisers seem not to appreciate that we need a root-and-branch change to connect Mashramani with Republicanism, and not to the pro-monarchical antecedents of the Trinidad Carnival.
As one encyclopedia notes, “Broadly defined, republicanism means a preference for non-monarchical government and a strong dislike of hereditary monarchy. Narrowly defined, and in its early modern context, it means self-government by a community of citizens in a city-state. Republicanism is a prominent concept in the history of political thought. Republican ideology claimed that citizens of republics enjoyed a liberty unknown to the subjects of monarchies because they were bound by laws that they themselves had made, not the personal whim of an individual monarch.”
In 1966, therefore, while we had been granted “independence” by Britain, the colonial power, we still retained a “Governor General” who represented the British Monarch as our “Head of State”. With the declaration of “republican” status in 1970, however, the Governor General was replaced by a “President” – Arthur Chung – who now became our “Head of State”. We, the Guyanese people, could now promulgate our own Constitution and decide on our own how we would run the affairs of our country.
Then Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, however, had his own ideas; and, unfortunately, it was anything but to further the values of republicanism, but rather to bring back the trappings of the monarchy in the form of an “Executive Presidency”. In 1980, he introduced a constitution which, as adumbrated by the late Professor Rudy James, accumulated so much power in that office that the incumbent was above the reach of both the law and the institutions of the state. That constitution was never ratified by the people, since Burnham used a cynical sleight of hand to have a referendum before its promulgation to disavow its need.
Our commemoration of Republic Day should creatively present these issues to the nation, to remind them that power resides in the people, and that monarchical unilateralism must be resisted and rolled back.
Reject the crass monarchical carnival imitations in Mashramani; big up Republicanism
