WELFARE, NOT WARFARE

WHEN I made my first appearance during 2011 on a platform of the Alliance For Change (AFC), the party’s co-leader Raphael Trotman declared at Parade Ground, “the war is over.” With those words, the AFC had committed itself to the politics of national reconciliation.
The first giant step in that direction came just over three years later when the AFC teamed up with the five-party, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) in February, 2015.
The major party in APNU was (and still is) the People’s National Congress (PNC) against which I was engaged, at grave risks, in intermittent war during the earlier years of my political life.

CALCULATED WARFARE
I remain proud of the risks that I have taken, and the decisions that I have made, which included my resignation from the PPP, in which I had served for 50 years. I left after I could no longer prevail against the calculated warfare against the nation’s best interest. I could no longer witness the unconscionable violation of the Rule of Law, the plunder of the nation’s coffers, the unholy alliance with the narco-criminal enterprise, and extra-judicial murders by the dreaded “phantom squad.”

I was sidelined and alienated when I protested. I was mocked for standing up for principle, as evident in the expletive-laced words of a dear comrade, who had become the godfather of the new clique: “Since when (expletive deleted) Moses Nagamootoo has become the conscience of (expletive deleted) Cheddi Jagan and the PPP!”
The same brother had earlier sought to portray me as “too aggressive and confrontational.” I had not expected that I could have been anything else, having grown up in the party on a brew of dogmatism and ethno-tribal politics. It was a huge fight inside the party for even a small opening to engage the other side, which was the PNC.

POLITICAL SOJOURN
When I turned 72 last week, I remarked that I had come a full circle by eschewing the politics of open warfare with those I had once considered to be my enemies. I had turned my proverbial sword into a plough, and embraced as paramount the welfare of our people, especially our children, from whatever quarters better might come.
I was pleased therefore to hear the remarks of Brian Allicock, Chairman of the Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo (Region Nine), that he had assured President Granger of his support for developments that promote the welfare of the people in his region.
Addressing residents at Sand Creek where a new well has been commissioned, Chairman Allicock said that he is proud of the developments in his region. He declared, “I welcome any development once it is for the people…and I am happy when I heard that pensioners like myself are now getting showers in their home…I am thankful to GWI and the government…”

Brian (brother of Vice-President Sydney Allicock) is a long-standing PPP supporter whom I have known for many years. He has been, as I always remembered him, a quiet, decent and unassuming person, who embraced Christianity with a passion and saw doing good as a service to his Lord.

Brian is not dogmatic or inflexible. His sincere commitment to the welfare of his people has led him, and leaders from several other indigenous peoples’ communities, to recognise the many good works in their native Rupununi. It would be difficult for them not to identify with the achievements such as a new township, improved roads, bridges, aerodromes, wells with potable water, reservoirs, sustained electricity, radio stations and internet services, etc..

It would be futile to maintain indifference towards the positive changes in the region, or to maintain a posture of open warfare against the APNU+AFC government.

DIALECTICS OF SITUATION
In my lifetime of interaction with him, Cheddi Jagan has taught me how to look at the “dialectics of the situation.” In cricket parlance, it is how to look at the ball in motion, and play it as it turns and spins. Those dialectics had led Cheddi to abandon his politics of “non-cooperation and civil disobedience” after the 1973 elections, and to embrace “critical support” for Forbes Burnham’s PNC government when there was a perceived threat to our sovereignty from a bordering state.
At that time, “critical support” was also rooted in an ideological conviction that “anti-imperialism was the gateway to socialism,” when it was acknowledged in the PPP that Burnham’s foreign policies were progressive, and ought to be supported.
Adopting as a yardstick a methodology of periodisation to separate the positive from the negative years, by the mid-1970s the PPP deemed Burnham’s PNC to be qualified for entry into a unified government of national unity and a national front.

PERMANENT INTERESTS
The PPP was prepared to abandon confrontational and aggressive warfare politics when the interests of the people had required it to “dialectically” change its position. There could be no viable platform for perpetual hatred. In politics, we are told, there are no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.

Mr Allicock was looking out for the interest of his people when he embraced the changing reality, and it may not be too late for others in the PPP’s camp to put the welfare of our people above the politics of warfare and self-interest.
I echo the words of young Trotman: “The war is over!” We have a nation to build with the dawn of a new, golden decade of development. We have to drop the baggage of divisive politics and warfare with ourselves.

If we have to look back at the lost half-century of our failed, one-party politics, we must do so as the prophet who looks back at what was, only to foretell the future. Above all, as Eduardo Galeano, the famous Uruguayan author of the epic, Open Veins of Latin America, advised, “at the end of the day, we are what we do to change who we are.”

BETTER MUST COME
In my book, “Fragments from Memory,” I wrote: “For me, in this last leg of a long journey, I am still confident that my strivings for national unity through a genuine multi-party democratic and honest Guyanese Government will at long last be achieved.”
While the formation of the APNU+AFC Coalition was a bold step in the right direction, we have to strengthen this unity. We must also reach out to and touch with our positive work all those who have been fed on the politics of dogma, hate and prejudice. As my friend Nigel Hughes likes to say, “better must come.”