THE last few weeks have been quite hectic in Guyana.

There have been a lot of revelations and discussions. The government has been tested—challenges emerged both from within and from the outside. Most of the focus has been on Minister Joe Harmon. Ironically, the opposition PPP has been missing in action. Instead, it is the media which have been asking questions and in the process putting the government under pressure to respond. It has been politics in motion. So be it.
It’s almost a year since the government has been in office. It came into office thanks to a slim electoral majority. Yet its attainment of the reins of government represented something larger than the margin of victory—yes it was a victory. It was a process that began in 2011 with the formation of the APNU and the subsequent parliamentary alliance with the AFC. These developments were in response to the rapid decline of our political culture and a further deepening of authoritarianism under a government that came to power as a result of the demise of another authoritarian government.
All of our Independence experience has been a struggle against the deformities of unchecked political power. The PNC government of 1964-92 sought to transition the country away from colonialism through social reform couched in revolutionary terms. But they attempted those reforms within the context of the authoritarian colonial legacy. In effect, colonial authoritarianism was replaced by post-colonial authoritarianism.
I understand how difficult it is for Burnhamites to reconcile the positive aspects of Burnhamist social reformist policies especially in education, housing and some sections of the economy with the naked repression that obtained. The tendency is to talk about the reforms and either silence or deny the repression—a futile undertaking at best. That is why the issue of Walter Rodney animates such crazy responses in some quarters; Rodney symbolises both the resistance to and the extremities of the repression of that time. Guyana and PNC traditionalists have to do what all societies have to do at some point in their history—come to grips with unfortunate periods in their history.
Rather than holler at one another, we are challenged to study and reflect on that period which is replicated in all post-plantation societies. The burning question is this: what is it about the plantation experience that persists even in the proposed alternative to it? For young people who care about those matters, Professor Clive Thomas’s 1984 “The Rise of the Authoritarian State in the Periphery” comes closest to a lucid explanation.
The PNC’s period in office is critical to an understanding of our Independence—it arose from a particular historical condition. The rise of the brand of PNC rule arose from a combination of colonial legacy and the ethnic dynamics that developed after the splits of the Independence movement in 1955 and 1956. But the PNC’s embrace of authoritarianism gave rise to two phenomena in Guyanese politics—one which contributed to its eventual fall from power and the other which turned out to be more pernicious than itself.
First, out of the repression of that period came an inevitable resistance impulse; repression by its very definition breeds resistance. The PNC’s reformist and authoritarian form of governance contrasted with the Independence promise of fundamental departure from coloniality—Freedom. The masses by their day-to-day experiences were expanding the limits of Independence and in the process coming into conflict with their own government. We constantly saw this in Linden from the RILA strikes in the early 1970s to the 1976 strikes to the 1983 strikes to the 1989 strikes. It is this resistance face of Guyana that gave rise to the WPA. The PNC-WPA confrontation has to be seen in this larger struggle for the soul and the direction of our Independence. So in a sense the very choices made by the PNC created its nemesis–the WPA. It is that strand of our politics that opened up the possibilities and nurtured the environment for the PNC’s exit from power in 1992.
The second phenomenon created by the PNC’s rule was the rise of an even more rampant PPP. The PNC’s authoritarianism allowed space for the PPP to disguise itself as the polar-opposite. The PPP of 1957-64 had showed its authoritarian face, but the developments of the next three decades served to dull the collective memory. The alienation created under PNC rule helped to create the PPP as a credible alternative. The WPA led the anti-PNC struggle, but the ethno-political dynamics meant that the PPP inherited the government in 1992.
The PPP then used the notion of the “end of authoritarianism” to construct the most diabolical regime in our post-colonial history. In effect,the PNC’s authoritarianism was replaced by PPP’s dictatorship. What is significant here is that the PPP had the luxury of constructing a dictatorship under the guise of democracy. The WPA after 1992 gradually declined as a militant force, thanks to the decline of militant resistance and the return of ethnic defensiveness as the dominant impulse in the society at large. Given its own actions while in government and its hope of returning to power, the PNC’s resistance was always tentative. This meant that the PPP got a relatively free ride.
But by 2011, the PNC had given up the fallacy of returning to power on its own and a small but significant section of the Indian-Guyanese population rebelled against the PPP’s hyper-dictatorship. Like its predecessor, the PPP had dug its own grave. The end came in 2011 and the final rites were performed in 2015. Guyana was rescued from the very edge. Given what we now know of what was happening with resources of the country, that rescue happened just in time.
We now come to the APNU+AFC government. For me, the events of the past few weeks are not about Joe Harmon. There is a tendency in our political culture to find an individual to blame, whether it be Burnham or Jagan or Jagdeo or Janet. Individuals matter, but what they represent matters more. The suggestion that Joe Harmon is probably corrupt is wrongheaded. The suggestion that he wields too much power is an inadequate diagnosis. Joe Harmon is not the problem.
The problem is that we are in a transformative moment that clashes with a government and state structure and a political leadership that is anything but transformative. I do not believe the leaderships of the APNU and the AFC understand the enormity of their mandate in terms of correcting the errors of the past. The APNU’s dilemma is that it includes elements of a new PNC which is a mix of progressive praxis and elements of the old PNC which are still disposed to domination and hegemony. The WPA, to which I belong, is immobilised by fear—it silences its voice out of fear of being the spoiler and being accused of lacking electoral clout. The AFC has unfortunately evolved into a party bereft of political conviction and instead behaves opportunistically.
It is that mix that has produced the dual competing poles of power in the executive, the absence of a policy and political councils to inform government, the growing hostility to criticisms, the tight control of the state media, the temptation to court discredited elements of the past regime, the confusing relationship to rogue capital, the hesitancy about what to do about past corruption, and the overall lack of a vision of where it wants to take the country.
The government has to come to grips with its historical importance; that it is not meant to be just another government. It has to realise that it was brought into power to break the cycle of authoritarianism—not to reinforce it. In the meantime, if we continue to make Harmon the story, we miss the essence of what is before us.

More of Dr. Hinds’s 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