EVERY society must grapple with its complexities at one level or the other. After all, societies are made up of and defined by the activities of humans who are ultimately complex beings. Whatever the shortcomings of Guyana’s media, it is characterised by vigorous political advocacy, debate and commentaries.

The letter sections of our newspapers, for example, are about the most vibrant you will find anywhere in the world. We have some of the most erudite and enlightened columnists and commentators who often manage to put their fingers on the pulse of our politics. Yet, these very commentators find ways to undermine their own enlightenment when faced with our political realities.

In the end, Guyanese politics have remained imprisoned by our collective insecurities, fears and narrowmindedness. The sometimes-enlightened public discourse has not been translated into an enlightened politics. I think a large part of it has to do with our readiness to fit our thinking about the national condition into fixed models. It is as if we, as a nation, are mortally afraid to explore and expand our horizons. It is amazing, how even when we are armed with the breadth of and distance afforded by history, we find ways to get ourselves stuck in old ways of understanding social and political realities.

After reading my friend Freddie Kissoon’s latest commentaries about the WPA and after ploughing through the last week’s rebuttal of my recent columns by various commentators at the Guyana Times, a young man wrote to ask me to explain why, if the WPA is no longer a vibrant party, do commentators spend so much time discussing and analyzing it. He wanted to know if there is something hidden about the WPA that the general public does not know. Another young person enquired whether I would respond to the incessant charges that I now support the PNC, a party that I once fought.

These two queries reflect how our public discourse could misinform and confuse our younger generation.
I have said before that the problem analysts have with analyzing and situating the WPA, is that that party upsets the framework which we have used to explain Guyanese politics. In other words, in the context of Guyanese politics, it’s an atypical political formation. The framework we have used explains our politics as a persistent struggle for power between the PPP and the PNC which is occasionally disturbed by a third party that bursts on to the scene, wins a few seats at an election and then fades away. This scenario is grounded in our almost-permanent and unchanging ethnic condition in which our major ethnic groups behave as racial enemies.

So, the United Force came on the scene, representing mostly Amerindian interests, won seats at both the 1964 and 1968 elections, went into government as part of a coalition with the PNC and was eventually consumed by PNC hegemony. The AFC followed the same pattern—it burst on to the scene in 2006, attracted largely PNC dissident voters and won some seats.

This scenario was repeated in 2011–this time with dissident PPP voters. In 2015, it went into a coalition with the PNC-dominated APNU and many commentators have anticipated a similar fate to that of the UF five decades ago. While the UF and the AFC have electorally disturbed the two-party ethnic electoral system, they failed to inflict permanent damage and ended up helping the PNC to assume power in place of the PPP.

The above scenario represents a relatively straightforward framework in which to explain our otherwise complex politics. The problem for the analyst is to figure out how to fit the WPA into that framework. Like the UF and the AFC, it’s a third party, but unlike them it never did well at elections. Yet its influence on the overall Guyanese post-colonial political praxis outstrips those of the UF and the AFC and is as indelible as the two titans—PPP and PNC.

I submit that this has to do with the nature of the WPA’s intervention and its threat to the status quo. Unlike the UF and the AFC, the WPA’s intervention threatened and at one point rattled the status quo in a deep, radical manner that pushed the country into the sphere of revolution. And those of us who have studied revolutions, know that that phenomenon haunts the society in permanent ways. Societies eventually forget elections, but never forgets revolutionary moments and those who facilitate those moments.

That’s why the WPA never goes away, even when Freddie kills it, reads the obituary and seals the tomb. It’s why the PPP rails at Clive Thomas over Guysuco and SARA or at Ogunseye or Hinds or even former WPA members over any and everything they say and do. It’s why the leadership of the present government tries at every twist and turn to contain the WPA, both as a party and as individuals. It’s why the PPP uses Walter Rodney to beat the PNC and the PNC seeks to assassinate him every day. It’s why no other party in our modern history is reminded so much about its roots.

Time moves on. The world changes and so do Guyana and its politics. Looking back, the WPA has made its fair share of political errors—Freddie has pointed out many of these. There is a lot that the WPA has in common with the larger political culture, but there is a lot about that culture that it stands on the other side of.

As one of the more visible and vocal WPA members, I understandably have had to bear a lot of the burdens of the party’s place in our politics. Today, the PPP sees me as the “mouthpiece” of the government, while many top government leaders treat me as an anti-government nuisance. Some see me as a Black “race man” and racist, while other see me as too radical and out of order.

I often tell friends that maybe they don’t know what to do with me. At the end of the day, I think I am independent—something that I learned from my four decades in the ranks of the WPA. That is why I have remained there. I don’t think any other party in Guyana would tolerate my in-your-face, Buxton-like independence.

Sometimes we are too quick to get in front of history. Sometimes we want it both ways—we want to declare an organisation irrelevant or dead and at the same time want to blame that same irrelevant organisation for the ills of the country.

If the PPP and the PNC represent the hegemonic instincts of our two major ethnic groups and the UF and AFC represent moments of electoral revolt against that hegemony, then the WPA represents a radical resistance praxis that always threatens to “manners” he entrenched political culture. Give thanks to the WPA.

More of Dr. Hinds ‘writings and commentaries can be found on his YouTube Channel Hinds’ Sight: Dr. David Hinds’ Guyana-Caribbean Politics and on his website www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com. Send comments to dhinds6106@aol.com