…terroristic violence?
Now that the characteristics of the Burnhamite dictatorship are sprouting like Jumbie Umbrella under President Granger – the present leader of the PNC, who’s vowed to complete the “legacy” of Burnham – should we be surprised that it looks like “kick-down-the-door” banditry is rearing its ugly and vicious head?
No, dear reader, we shouldn’t: dictatorships, like diseases of the body and the body politic, have a number of morbid symptoms that typify them.
And these are all self-reinforcing. The undermining of the institutions of democracy like the Judiciary, Elections Commission, the free press, etc operates at one level: the formal level, involving the neutering of competing elites. At the mass level, the supporters of the Opposition must be terrorised – using a variety of strategems — into a frame of mind that they see no alternative than making their “peace” with the PNC.
Remember how Burnham used to boast he’d brought back “peace” to Guyana after the sixties? OF COURSE HE DID!!! He was the one who’d unleashed the violence in the first place – and could chose to rein it in whenever he wanted. Who owns the dog and all that…
And we arrive at the latest iteration of kick-down-the-door bandits. The key characteristics of this gambit is firstly to brutally show the citizens their home is not their castle.
In the Burnham era, the phenomenon spawned a whole new cultural change – wherein citizens willingly “grilled” their doors and windows to such an extent that their homes were nothing less than self-constructed prisons. These were the equivalent to the medieval drawbridge citizens hoped would ward off intruders. Didn’t work in that go around – and wouldn’t work now.
Then there was the gratuitous violence — to extract more loot — and even then, for good measure, just to drive the condign lesson home. The “big guns” often borrowed from the Disciplined Forces; it was just to drive more fear into the terrorized, and remind them the penalty of resistance was death.
The firings of almost 6000 sugar workers is violence of a more subtle type – self-inflicted violence. But it is violence nevertheless. Without any source or hope of any income, this community would intensify the pathologies developed since indentureship by subsistence wages in the best of times. Expect suicide, alcoholism, — now joined by drug abuse – domestic violence, violence against each other in drunken brawls to jump to stratospheric levels. They ain’t gonna fight the Government – but themselves!
Then there will be the passive violence of having the People’s Militia in the communities, spying on folks and reporting their every “infraction” – that is to say, any sign of supporting the PPP.
They say forewarned is forearmed. But your Eyewitness isn’t optimistic.
…the Guyana National Service?
Did you read about the call by the Region 3 CEO – a PNC Government appointee of course, in the PPP controlled RDC – calling for the relaunching of the Guyana National Service (GNS)? Ever since the Government took office, there’s been a steady and growing orchestrated effort from operatives at the “bottom” to make this call. It’s not a coincidence.
The GNS was part and parcel of the apparatus of the Burnham Dictatorship. He had this “thing” about “discipline” – and saw the lack of this quality as a prime reason for the lack of progress to execute his “vision”. In this way, he was like Dessalines, the Haitian despot who succeeded Toussaint and made himself “Emperor of Haiti”. That’s why you’ve been hearing from Granger and his army types in control about the need for “discipline”.
In Burnham’s case, he launched the GNS not only to instil “discipline” in the young recruits, but to “forge” a unity among them to make the ‘real Guyanese”.
It’s that “forging” we should be worried about!
…roustabouts
The meeting between Banks and Exxon execs “to foster mutual interests” is intriguing. Is Banks the official supplier of beer to the Exxon roustabouts – the unskilled labour on the FPSO?
Fired cane cutters should do well here!!
