By Akola Thompson
SINCE the coalition Government announced that the Red House lease was invalid, I have been observing not only the blatant misinformation being peddled, particularly by the PPP/C. There was also the Minister of Social Cohesion, Volda Lawrence, engaging in a counter-picket outside the Red House with a band of supporters. However, what is interesting in all this is the ethnic politics egged on by the invocation of our past leaders and the dangers associated with this.

While the Red House controversy is not particularly a racial issue, it has invariably become that, given Cheddi Jagan’s popularity amongst Indo-Guyanese as being a saviour and the belief that the PNC, popular amongst Afro-Guyanese, in any form or fashion is the aggressor, given Linden Forbes Burnham’s often cited ‘dictatorial’ rule.

There is a cult of personality that surrounds our premier leaders, Jagan and Burnham, that has and continues to fuel their sycophantic deification. While this is seemingly more prevalent on the side of the PPP/C, the PNC, now part of the coalition government, is not without fault. If anything, I believe the PNC to be a bit more insidious with their ethnic politics. I remember shortly before the 2015 elections were held, myself and a group of other young people had met up with several leaders of the coalition to discuss among several other things, strategy, with regard to the areas being tackled.

There we saw how leaders and supporters of certain ethnicities were shot down as candidates to go into certain villages, because it might not fare well for the coalition. On one hand, I could to a certain degree understand the rationale used, but this certainly did not make it any less wrong or justifiable. While several of us voiced our disapproval, the plan of course still went through, because that is just the way politics seems to work, particularly when we are trying to cuddle and milk the racial tensions within our country.

This popularity amongst both leaders by their followers and successors have created within our psyches the faulty desire to place a ridiculous amount of faith into the leaders we see representing our long-revered, but extremely flawed premiers, Jagan and Burnham; because deification of course seeps down into the deification of successors as is seen in the case of Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo and President David Granger.

When one considers that there is nothing particular about several of the forerunners of the PPP/C and the PNC now part of the coalition government, we will realise the depth of it. They have vested interests in protecting — while simultaneously deterring– threats to the status quo and their hegemony. In this society, we have those who think it is their divine right to rule, given their ethnicity and position in the party that birthed their political careers, continuing the long tradition of their leaders by exploiting the realities of the racial composition of the electorate.

We cannot, if we hope to become a progressive society, continue allowing leaders to paint predecessors and themselves as deities without flaws, faults and bouts of corruption and set themselves upon an altar free of criticism. We must at some point begin to hold our leaders to a higher degree of accountability, not only for their actions, but for the messages they spread and refuse to spread amongst the populace.