AS an academic you get fed up with the constant mis-analyses and flawed methodology people use in Guyana to assess politics and sociology. It does not matter how widely educated many social scientists are in this country, the constant sermonising by these people that only the PNC and PPP stoke ethnic tensions makes you nauseated at this degenerate mentality

You are sickened by this output not because of its repetitiveness but because it denies the fundamental basis on which civilisation rests – the dialectics. Dialectical changes in society naturally exist just as the natural elements in the physical world. It is simple to understand. There is a natural magnetic field in the physical world; there is the dialectic in the social world.

Once there is human society there will be the dialectics at work. It is simply bewildering for someone not to see changes as part of social life. There can be progression or regression but dialectical changes are constant. Let us bring the argument to Guyana.
Almost on a daily basis, we see and read the outpourings from people lamenting the ethnic incitement by the PNC and PPP through their perpetuation of racial lyrics. That is a flawed methodology. Guyana has changed profoundly since the PPP won back power in 1992. Social classes and their leadership have undergone dialectical changes.

There are class forces in Guyana that instigate racial animosities that fester and these incitements are laid at the doorsteps of the major political parties. The contention of this paper is that Guyana’s racial divisions must not be seen as the exclusive creation of the two major parties as has been elaborated over the past 70 years by academics, political observers and foreign writers.

Dialectical changes have occurred since 1992 that have brought to the surface, class forces that have invented a racial agenda in keeping with their political intentions. It suits the purpose of these class forces, especially the Mulatto/Creole class (MCC), to drum up the racial lyrics because for them, it is an avenue to either weaken the PPP’s tenure or to create a pathway for power-sharing.

I am going to be ridiculed as a PPP propagandist for contesting that the PPP carefully eschews racial grammar and ethnic songs. If you do a meticulous examination of the public speeches of the President, his ministers and his party executives, you will not find any reference to race talk.
Space would not allow me to elaborate why this is so and its relevance is not germane to my theory. My theory is that racial incitement is not contained in the oral and verbal output of the ruling party and its government thus it cannot be accused of fanning ethnic flames.
If you do not throw gasoline to out a fire, you cannot be accused of expanding the conflagration. This is hard for anti-PPP people to accept. But the fact remains that you cannot accuse the PPP Government of contributing to racial disharmony when, as a government, it does not use racially inspired language.

I cannot account for what I spoke at closed bottom-house meetings. There is no material available from that particular forum to come to a conclusion. The researcher has to rely on public pronouncements. If a ruling party eschews a racially inspired vocabulary, then it cannot be accused of exacerbating racial tensions because it is not driving that vocabulary into the heads of the citizens.

I return to my theory that other entities spread racial gospels and political observers have to abandon the traditional methodology of the PPP and PNC being the only two spreaders of ethnic divisions.
Three examples should suffice. 1- More racist tones, the past four years, have come from the WPA than any other organisation in this country. The WPA co-leader, Tacuma Ogunseye, has been charged with racial incitement.
2- The Guyana Human Rights Organization (GHRA) threw gasoline on fire in September 2020. After the opposition, PNC turned a sociological crime of the murder of two cousins in Cotton Field, Region Five into a racial act, the GHRA took over the race bandwagon.

The GHRA upped the racial tempo. The GHRA’s activism strengthened the fiction that East Indian supporters killed the two cousins as an expression of joy over the PPP’s election victory. It was the GHRA’s relentless position that contributed to racial attacks on East Indians in Region Five.
The third example is the Stabroek News’s writer who does the Saturday editorial. The writer composes condescending descriptions of PPP leaders that have pellucid racial underpinnings. I close with my consistent advocacy that unless we do class analysis we cannot understand society. The theory that only PPP and PNC preach ethnic sermons has not only become stale but is no longer valid.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.