IN an unaired edition of the Freddie Kissoon Show, Ruel Johnson made an interesting point about David Granger’s leadership. Johnson worked in the Granger Government, so he must have a few insights about the nature of the APNU+AFC government.
Johnson said it was under Granger that the erosion of PNC’s existence began. He argued that Granger exorcised (my word) the youth potential in the PNC because he stacked the government with people of advanced age. The talented young PNC leaders were overlooked, thus denying them experience in government.
I want to link Johnson’s view to four episodes that share meaningful lessons for young Guyanese interested in politics.
First, in 2017, at my request, I met with David Hinds on the seawall. While we were talking, he related an incident in which President Granger raised his voice in an intimidating way to Clive Thomas. My reaction to that revelation was why someone of long-serving patriotism as Thomas, and whose merger with the PNC helped it to secure power in 2015, didn’t put Granger in his place.
The second situation was over lunch at La Excellence Restaurant on Charlotte Street, Lacytown, with a group of second-tier leaders in the AFC in June 2015. What they told me I have written about in my columns several times. I am reproducing it once more because young people who plan to enter politics need to learn from it.
They told me they were in the boardroom at the AFC head office in May 2015 when the AFC was selecting its Cabinet Ministers; the founders of the AFC were all there, and they made the decision to call a total stranger to AFC politics and offer her the position of Minister of the Environment. These second-tier leaders, who worked tirelessly for the AFC for 10 years and were all qualified, just sat there with their tails between their legs.
The third episode occurred in the 1970s. Prime Minister Forbes Burnham sent a delegation of the youth arm of the PNC (YSM) to greet a Chinese delegation at the airport. They refused to go, saying that China had relations with the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Burnham was livid and told them that if that is the pressure they are going to put on his government, then they must be prepared to accept the fall of the PNC government with the PPP coming into power.
Finally, the fourth story. I was having dinner at New Thriving in 2016 with someone who, at the time, was perhaps one of the most strategically placed diaspora personalities in the AFC leadership. I cannot call his name, but one day I will (maybe when I write my memoir). This gentleman was a personal friend of mine before the AFC came into power.
He said he approached Khemraj and told him it was strange that, given my record of social activism and my value to the AFC’s accession to power, I was not offered any meaningful role in government. He explained that Khemraj was very praising in his assessment of me, but said that you do not put people like Freddie Kissoon in government; they are anarchist in nature and they will create serious problems.
I never held that against Khemraj, because, I know he was right, and that was who I always was and will always be. Anarchism is a branch of philosophy that believes power and philosophy are antithetical, and that power has congenital defects. I embrace anarchism as a philosophical way of life, and I have always been open, fearless and unrepentant about my political directions where and when I came into confrontation with power.
Anarchism has its value. That group of YSM cadres that told Burnham his government was wrong, and that they were not obeying his instruction was anarchist at heart. They were criticising power. If the young people in the PNC between 2015 and 2020 had a touch of anarchist philosophy in them, and knew about what their predecessors in the PNC did to Burnham in the 1970s, they would have confronted David Granger and his government, and rearranged it despite the threat of bringing down the PNC-AFC administration. Look how it turned out. The PNC is dying.
If those young second-tier AFC leaders had some anarchist sentiments in them, they would have overthrown the middle-class cabal in that boardroom in 2015. They did not. The AFC elitist group went on to kill the AFC. As for me, what I am about to say will shock you, but I have no apologies. If I had worked my body to the ground only to see those elites overlook my comrades and me and select that lady, violence would have broken out in that boardroom. Chairs and missiles would have flown around.
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.