Dear Editor,
FREDERICK Kissoon in his column published in the Kaieteur News on Friday March 24, 2017, under the caption: “Class struggle in Guyana: Marx versus Popper” made some important observations on the character and outcome of the parking meter protests.
In his letter Kissoon compared that protest with the street vendors struggle against their removal from the city pavements by the Georgetown City Council and showed the social and class realities that influence the outcome of these struggles.
Kissoon’s contention is that the parking meter and the vendors’ protests demonstrated important aspects of the class contradictions in our society. He pointed to the fact that persons who were the leading force in the parking meter mobilization were citizens with endless resources – financial, social and political – to prosecute their campaign against the City Council, SCS and the government. The struggle of the vendors, (who are among the poor and powerless in the society) unlike that of the supporters of MAPM, was devoid of resources and unsurprisingly, did not achieve the partial victory that MAPM was able to obtain. Without the resources that were at the disposal of the organisers of MAPM the vendors had to abide with the council‘s decision that removed them from the established places of their livelihood.
The parking meter demonstrations attracted a number of working people who had good reasons to identify with the struggle, but as Kissoon pointed out the principal actors were prominent members of the private sector and I would add, members of the opposition PPP. This involvement in protest action represented a marked departure in the normal behaviour of members of the private sector as it relates to their attitude to social/political issues. The city experienced the closure of a number of business houses in support of the protests. Many business proprietors forced their employees to join the weekly demonstrations. These economic czars were silent during the grave excesses of the PPP regime, which saw a reign of state terror lasting many years that resulted in the execution of hundreds of citizens – mainly young African men. At no time in that long and painful ordeal did the private sector elements close their doors to denounce the state’s involvement in those extra –judicial killings. In fact their advocacy in that period was to call for more draconian measures to be employed by the police, army and the government.
I am totally against the parking meter project but I refused to join the protest actions for the reasons expressed above and those enunciated in Kissoon’s column. I wish at this time to pose two questions to Kissoon which are intended to develop a better understanding of his posture on the parking meter fiasco: The first question is this: Freddie, given your keen awareness of the class nature of the parking meter protests why did you join the demonstrations? Secondly, why have you agonised over not being able to be there more often? Freddie, given your ideological position and the politics implicit in your analysis and your class conviction, it is fair to expect that you will demonstrate constraints when faced with some types of manifestations of class struggle in the society. In failing to exercise these constraints you run the risk of being sucked into the struggle of the rich and powerful. The parking meter weekly demonstrations, colourful as they were are one such struggle.
Regards
Tacuma Ogunseye