HINDS’SIGHT Bharrat Jagdeo is the PPP’s best soldier – especially at a time when the party has to hold on to its support base in the hour of defeat

THE recent announcement that former President, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, could become the PPP’s leader in the National Assembly has caused much comment from political pundits and commentators. Some have argued that his elevation to the office would not be good for the PPP. Others think he would be an easy target for the Coalition. Bharrat Jagdeo has emerged as the most colourful politician of his generation. In my opinion, he presided over the most destructive regime in Guyana’s post-colonial experience. And this includes the much reviled Burnham regime. His rule changed the way politics is practised in Guyana – perhaps forever. But while the Jagdeo regime was bad for Guyana, it was good for the PPP and its constituency in some critical ways.
One of the problems for the PPP when it was in office during the period 1957-64 was how to govern without overt and covert destabilisation in a political center that was populated by supporters of its opponents and controlled institutionally by African Guyanese. The PPP blamed its demise in 1964 partly on the urban hostility it faced.
When they returned to power in 1992, the PPP faced the same challenge. After they made their initial move to dominate, the PNC and its supporters gave them hell. They literally had to fight for survival from 1997 to 2003 as the country was made ungovernable via marches, strikes and violent confrontations. By then Dr Jagan was dead and Mrs Jagan had surrendered.
Enter Jagdeo. He set about doing what Dr Jagan could not do – he made it possible for the PPP to govern without humbug in Georgetown. Within a decade his regime had put an end to the challenges to the PPP. The so-called Buxton insurgency was crushed. The African Guyanese community and the institutions they controlled succumbed to the politics of bribery and force. From trade union to political party to African Rights groups to Village Groups to the military, important sections of the African elite and the African Guyanese masses were seduced by the Jagdeo factor.
The Jagdeo regime did something else. First, it trapped the African Guyanese youth in the dance-halls by elevating partying to state policy and to the pinnacle of “culture.” Second, it neutralised the Urban Street Force and Underground that it felt was sympathetic to the Opposition and recruited some to the para-sate Phantom Squads. In the end, African Guyanese resistance was crippled and silenced. This opened the way for unrivalled domination by the PPP at all levels of the society.
In addition to silencing the African Guyanese community, the Jagdeo regime reconstructed the Indian Guyanese community. It merged PPP dominance with East Indian dominance and reinforced a sense of superiority in sections of that community. In the process it opened space for two critical tendencies. First, an Indian supremacist tendency grounded in an anti-black racism which begun to emerge and found semi-state legitimacy that, for example, was reflected in editorials and commentaries in the state and PPP supported media. Second, a new type of East Indian youth emerged. Flushed with money, bling and other material trappings, they ruled the dance-halls and the streets as the new bullies.
These developments and others infuriated sections of the East Indian population that in turn revolted at the 2011 election and voted for the AFC. The Jagdeo way had backfired–momentarily. Fast forward to 2015. The PPP was at its weakest. African Guyanese were energised by the prospect of an electoral victory and showed signs of breaking out of the Jagdeo prison. Indian Guyanese were threatening to also bolt their prison.
Enter Jagdeo again. He went into top gear. He reached for a rhetoric and style that went to the heart of the Indian Guyanese socio-political psyche. He took the podium and moved the traditional PPP bottom house rhetoric into the open. He fought back like a “kick ass” warrior. In the end, he brought back a significant portion of the 2011 rebels to the PPP ranks. To my mind, it was he who was largely responsible for a discredited PPP coming within striking distance of the Coalition. Thanks to Jagdeo, the East Indian community would no longer perceive themselves as targets for bullying by other ethnic groups.
In my estimation, Bharrat Jagdeo, at the helm of the PPP, is not good for that section of the population which does not like the PPP. But if you are a diehard PPP supporter, at a time when the party has to hold on to its support base in the hour of defeat, Bharrat Jagdeo is your best soldier.
(Dr David Hinds, a political activist and commentator, is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Caribbean and African Diaspora Studies at Arizona State University. More of his 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 DR.DHinds@gmail.com)

In my estimation, Bharrat Jagdeo, at the helm of the PPP, is not good for that section of the population which does not like the PPP. But if you are a diehard PPP supporter, at a time when the party has to hold on to its support base in the hour of defeat, Bharrat Jagdeo is your best soldier.

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