Two weeks ago, the Opposition PNC/APNU and some of its allied organizations went to Washington, DC to participate in a putative “Conference on Guyana” organized by a Brooklyn-based extremist supporter. In a carefully orchestrated tango, the Guyanese delegation was hosted at the National Press Club to confer an illusion of authority, even though it can be rented as an “event venue…for hosting professional and social events”. There were supposed to be high-level members of Congress and the US Government present, but their absence had to be “excused”.
The highlight in their promotion of the event was their meeting with the “Congressional Black Caucus” (CBC) which – unfortunately for them – turned out to be a damp squib after they were asked to provide “data” as evidence to support their exhaustive and exhausting claims of discrimination against African-Guyanese and were unable to do so. These claims have been made ever since they reluctantly vacated office five months after their rigging of the March 2, 2020 elections was thwarted through the evidence gleaned from a recount of the votes cast. And though the PPP Government has also been requesting evidence of the alleged discrimination, evidence has also not been forthcoming.
The CBC has been an important facet of modern US governance since it was launched in 1971 in the heat of the Civil Rights Movement to deliver justice denied to African-Americans since the abolition of American slavery a century before. Even though they had not named themselves as a caucus, the White Representatives from the Southern states had been meeting as such to deny Blacks the rights they theoretically won at abolition. The Black Congressmen and women had experienced, to their cost, the power of working as a united group.
In 1971, even though there were thirteen Black members of Congress, none of them was in a position on any Committee where they could influence governmental policies. They were routinely passed over when those appointments were to be filled. Today they number 56 members in the House and Senate, and are represented in the widest and highest strata of the US Legislative Branch. According to their website, they are “committed to using the full Constitutional power, statutory authority, and financial resources of the federal government to ensure that African-Americans and other marginalized communities in the United States have the opportunity to achieve the American Dream.”
While their raison d’etre was to further the rights of Black Americans, from early on – perhaps because some of the founders, like Shirley Chisholm, were descended from Caribbean Blacks – they took an interest in US Foreign Policy, as it affected Blacks abroad. On their website, they signal this by stating as one of their policy agendas: “promoting U.S. foreign policy initiatives in Africa and other countries that are consistent with the fundamental right of human dignity.” In the eighties, they played a critical role in influencing US policy on ending apartheid in South Africa, and later to ensure that refugees from Haiti were treated in the same manner as other refugees.
Against this background, the CBC can be a powerful voice for Blacks outside of the US, which is very strategic, since the US is still the most powerful country in the world, with the capacity and means to influence other nations. But its protestations notwithstanding, it will only do so in line with its realist stance, when its interests are affected. Interests are ends, and policies are the means crafted to achieve those ends. As such, even though the CBC may have some “epidermal sympathy”, for interventions, they will have to demonstrate that US interests will be furthered, and this must be backed up with hard evidence for appropriate policies to be crafted. For its domestic agenda, the CBC created the “CBC Foundation” as its Washington research and policy arm. In Guyana, the Official Opposition is funded by the state, and perhaps they could take a page from the CBC’s book, so they – and Guyana – would not be embarrassed again.
