I WOULD probably locate the period August 2020 to December 2023 as perhaps the richest moment in applying philosophy, Freudian analysis and class analysis to study Guyanese society.
The difference between this period and other periods, especially the demands of the Mulatto/Creole class (MCC) in the 1950s, is the exhibition of the Freudian mind.

From the 50s, the MCC did what it thought it had to do and it did it as part of the class dynamic in society. It advanced its reasons why it should inherit the post-colonial state after the colonials left. It felt it was more culturally equipped than Indian leadership and it advanced its argument in society.

Former Prime Minister Sam Hinds explained this class mentality based on cultural arguments when I interviewed him two weeks ago on the Freddie Kissoon/Gildarie Show. He explained in 1990 when a middle-class, civil-society group was formed named GUARD to agitate for free and fair elections and he joined the leadership, 50 per cent of the people in GUARD hoped that when free elections came, the PPP would not win because its leadership was not culturally and racially eligible to administer a western Caribbean country.

See my column on what he said: Friday, March 8, 2024, “Shocking revelation by former Prime Minister Sam Hinds.” Guyana left the overt sociology of class demands after 1992 when the PPP won the first free and fair electoral contest since 1964. The PPP ruled Guyana from 1992 to 2015.

By this time, the MCC had become less conspicuous because opposition to PPP rule was dominated by the politics of violence of the PNC as the main opposition party.
The MCC through the working out of the dialectics became active through the instrumentality of the WPA.

It was the WPA under the leadership of Rupert Roopnaraine and Clive Thomas that saw an opening for the WPA and the PNC to forge an alliance to win electoral power. Ravi Dev has written extensively on Roopnaraine’s efforts to prevent a total opposition alliance because Roopnaraine was not comfortable with Dev’s Indian organisation, ROAR.

The birth of the Alliance For Change (AFC) concretised the rebirth of the MCC and under the leadership of David Granger, the PNC merged with the WPA and the AFC and power was achieved in 2015. It was a long journey by the MCC beginning in the 50s to have power when the British indicated that after World War 11, the time had come to leave the colonies.

The MCC in the form of the new political leader of the PNC and those in the WPA and AFC may have believed it had an anthropological right to govern a westernised Caribbean country but in power, the MCC showed it was administratively bankrupt. It knew nothing about administering a government.

Its track record in office was inferior to that of the PPP, maybe because of four reasons: the PPP’s long years in active politics in opposition; the PPP’s connection to the world of Indian business success in Guyana; the accumulation of administrative knowledge by the PPP of decades of organising Hindu and Muslim events and the PPP’s intimate relation with Guyana’s largest union, GAWU.

After the loss of power in 2020, the MCC has battled the PPP even more tempestuously than the official opposition parties. One has to remember that the mental energy the MCC has exhibited since 2020 has never been seen before in Guyanese history because there was no fatalist mind of the MCC from the 50s onwards.

The MCC from the 1950s until 1992 never felt it had to fight to survive. So, it never possessed a pessimistic instinct. After 1992, the fatalist mind was not there because the MCC always felt through its symbiotic relationship with African Guyanese that African Guyanese activism could bring it back to power and so said, so done in 2015, with the famous declaration of David Granger to Raphael Trotman: “Raphael, this is Nassau.”

After 2020, the MCC has been waging a tempestuous opposition to the PPP government through the Stabroek News, certain women organisations, certain civil-society organisations and well-placed individuals, including known MCC academics.

What we have seen since 2020 is a class confrontation in which the African working-class organisation, the PNC, has been sidelined. It is the MCC versus the PPP. In Marxist theory, this is called “class warfare.”

Read the Stabroek News, read what the MCC academics say, and look at what the MCC civil society groups are doing. From here on it is class and colour versus the PPP. Irfaan Ali will defeat the MCC in 2025 and definitely by a long way. Can the MCC survive after 2025?