MR. Freddie Kissoon (column KN Jun 12) stated that the country needs a constitutional system that prevents the control of power in the hands of an ethnic constituency through the instrumentality of its political party. He also said Hoyte was the most multi-racial of the leaders. Both points need expansion. A response to KN was not published. For the record, Hoyte only embraced Indians during his last few years (leaving out the rigging of elections and the lack of Indian presence in his Ministries from 1968 thru 1989) because of pressure from the international community and local Indian businessmen who made rapprochement with Indians a condition for their financial bailout of his government.
Hoyte acquiesced to the businessmen’s demands and allowed Indians access to their cultural and religious diets. His move was political in nature and not genuine. After Hoyte lost the elections of 1997 and 2001, he criticized Indians for not supporting him and he resorted to militant tribalistic instincts leading to serious violent attacks against Indians. That is not the hallmark of a multi-racial leader. Nevertheless, Hoyte should be given credit for ending the ban on foods and allowing opposition parties some freedom to operate unlike his predecessor Forbes Burnham. Also, Hoyte allowed a free and fair election to take place against opposition from the rest of his party that wanted to continue with the rigging of the preceding 28 years. Those two points made him different from the rest of the PNC. But multi-racial? Not with the beating of Indians!
On Kissoon’s theory of ethnic dominance, the society has been this way since its inception when it was established by the Europeans a couple hundred years earlier. The modern day system (allowing for ethnic dominance) was put in place by Burnham with the expectation that his PNC would remain in power forever (through rigged elections) and as such govern on behalf of its ethnic group. The policy backfired in 1992 when international pressure forced the PNC to hold free and fair elections causing it to lose control over office and the dominance of the politics by its ethnic supporters. Since then, the PNC has been trying to regain control of office and now practice what some political analysts call the dictatorship of the opposition.
As Kissoon pointed out, insecurity, fear and pessimism – all attributed to PNC’s dominance — drove Indians solidly behind the PPP until last November, when some defected to the AFC because they felt the PPP betrayed them by not providing them a fair share of the resources. Many Africans defected to the AFC in 2006 because they were displeased with the leadership of the PNC at that time. The Africans returned home when the leadership changed under the new PNC (APNU). So the population has remained divided as it was during the 1950s when the decolonization movement split – people think and vote ethnicity.
The AFC made a racial breakthrough because of its ethnic orientation in 2006 (African party) and in 2011 (Indian party). If the AFC’s ethnic orientation of 2011 changes in 2016, Indians may also return to the PPP just as the Africans abandoned the AFC in 2011, when its ethnic orientation went through a change. The spectre of the return of the PNC, considering what it did to Indians during the 28 years dictatorship; make them unwilling to take that risk of allowing the PNC to run to office. Indians feel that the behaviour of the PNC over the last several years has not shown the party has reformed itself. A return of the PNC to office will not alter ethnic dominance.