BORDERING us on the east and west, in Suriname and Venezuela, we see governments of former military strongmen causing unease and tension and geopolitical concerns in global foreign policy, making our region of the world a focal point of United States interest.While Suriname under former military dictator, now elected President Desi Bouterse, performs well in its socio-economic development, we see the opposite in Venezuela, where the late Hugo Chavez installed a military regime that reduced the nation to gross poverty.
President Bouterse generates strong resentment and disdain in Europe, with the Netherlands particularly peeved at his rise to power, although, given his contemporary respect for democracy, he’s entitled to rule his sovereign nation.
Venezuela generates ire and frustration of the US in regional matters, and even provokes international concerns.

In this scenario, surely the US geopolitical ears must be piqued with Guyana’s political Opposition showing a decided tilt towards a military-minded hierarchy.

One wonders at the kickback from the US-backed national newspaper, Stabroek News, against words of concern from former President Bharrat Jagdeo, head of the Public Service, Dr Roger Luncheon and General Secretary of the ruling People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), Clement Rohee, who all expressed alarm at the prevalence of military minds within the Opposition camp.
In fact, these leaders express concern that the political Opposition got “hijacked”, with military-trained leaders now penetrating top positions within the Opposition political landscape.
The Alliance For Change (AFC), itself enjoying strong alignment with the western diplomatic community, with regular conversation among itself and the American, British, Canadian and European diplomatic circle, seems strangely silent about the Opposition’s increasing love for ex-military types.
It’s either the US has lost sight of its geopolitical mooring in this region, ignoring its chagrin over the Suriname-Venezuela corridor, and thus turning a blind eye to Guyana’s increasing militarised political landscape, or it’s playing possum, working quietly behind the scenes to minimise a wholesale democratically engineered militarised Atlantic region of South America.

When ex-head of the Guyana Defense Force (GDF), Brigadier David Granger, took command of the People’s National Congress (PNC), a Party with a nefarious history of military misuse and abuse, Guyanese saw him as a history scholar, rather than a military man.
Brigadier Granger led the PNC into the political coalition A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), a grouping of hardcore political parties, the group lacking any relationship with civic society. Now, APNU has become a hotbed of this forging of ex-military leaders into Guyana’s main Opposition political front, and suddenly Brigadier Granger seems to be losing his scholarly image, appearing instead to be a military-type leader.
Maybe the AFC tempers some of the concerns of such a political scenario, and the Stabroek News would rein in any indiscretion were this military-political unit to gain political power.
But one wonders at Guyana’s new political landscape. No wonder the PPP/C is so concerned. Not only would this provoke PPP/C’s memories of the GDF’s role in rigged elections and in the PNC’s paramountcy practice for decades, as we witness in testimonies at the Rodney Commission, but it would surely cause concerns within the western diplomatic community.

Would the ABCE powers want to be saddled with military-minded governments in Suriname, Venezuela and Guyana? That seems unlikely. For one, this situation never obtained in Guyana’s history, despite the PNC’s close alignment and abuse of the GDF during the dictatorship regime. And secondly, Guyana as a British Commonwealth member would want to maintain its strong civic-political nature, rather than a new military-political nature, and the western world would want to ensure this status quo obtains as our perpetual playing field, even if it’s only to preserve a predictable Guyana, rather than a potentially disruptive regional ally.
As we see with Suriname and Venezuela, military-political rulers are prone to disruptive relationships with western powers. Guyana cannot venture down that road.
Of course, we cannot overlook the fact that the Opposition and its constituents desperately want to gain political power, especially after losing free and fair elections since 1992, and would go to any means possible to govern.
Quite a few political discontents and disgruntled souls harbour deep resentment against the ruling party and Government, including the political leaders who shut their eyes to APNU’s new character of ex-military men, and aligned themselves to the singular cause of getting the PPP/C out of Government.
It’s anybody’s democratic right to form alliances and partnerships and to seek the electoral defeat of any government. We’re a full-blown democracy. Once we respect the democratic right of Guyanese to elect their own Government in free and fair elections, the political playing field is open and free.
But, democracy functions best within a framework of voter education and voter awareness. And it is imperative and a critical necessity for us to discuss these issues openly and without fear or intimidation.
When Jagdeo, Dr Luncheon and Rohee raised the issue of the changing face of the Opposition, noting the preponderance of ex-military types in leadership positions, we saw a vociferous outcry against their warnings.
It seems we harbour among us influential media types and Opposition-aligned malcontents who would not want such information in the public domain, that we should remain silent about these things, never bringing them to public light.
But open debate, public discussions and sensible airing of our concerns, form the very foundation of our democratic Guyanese society. Bringing out into the open such crucial information as the increasing nature of the Opposition towards a patriarchal, top-down, command-type, obey-without-question style of leadership, is of utmost importance, relevance and concern to our national wellbeing.
The western diplomatic core may harbour their own concerns and reservations, but they all too often turn a blind eye when progressive societies like Guyana head down the wrong road. Our nation is fast emerging as a regional socio-economic power, and as we saw happened in the 1960’s, we face the real scenario of falling into a political swamp where we sink again for another three decades.
We’re not saying the PPP/C has all the answers and knows best. Indeed the PPP/C needs Guyanese of all persuasion on board as we develop and grow and take our successes over the past two decades to greater heights. Plenty of people today stand peeved at the Party. Government faces a real challenge in securing the leadership skills and expertise to manage local communities and weed out inefficiency and poor people relations across villages and towns.
We recognise there’s discontent on the ground, and indeed Guyanese want to see a political landscape with options and choices.
The AFC once offered such a hope, but fell away, and now stands obsolete and irrelevant.
The PNC morphed into APNU, and APNU now leans so far out towards making Guyana a worrying geopolitical case, as happened with our neighbours Suriname and Venezuela, that we’ve got to sit up, be sober-minded, and realise what’s possible.

In that one realisation, to see the possible writing on the wall, to act on the lessons we learn from history, to see what’s going on in the world around us, we would exercise wisdom and fortitude and good sense.

We want Brigadier Granger and our bright ex-military men to contribute to Guyana’s development and progress. We want them to exercise their essential life skills and professional knowledge in playing civic roles, in mentoring our young, in teaching at our university, in training us to live with discipline and integrity.

But we must guard against our nation joining Suriname and Venezuela in an ominous military-political front along the Atlantic South American coast, for this would engineer a geopolitical backlash that would again cripple our socio-economic development.
By Shaun Michael Samaroo