Third Force Politics is Revolutionay and Practical

Now why do I make a bold statement like that, and what do I base it on? Well, I make it because I happen to believe that it is true, and I base it on the fact that what is being pursued by this new movement appear to be too ambitious an undertaking for the two political dinosaurs locked in perpetual struggle for the right to determine and govern the affairs of our State. Politics in Guyana, except for the brief interlude when Walter Rodney appeared on the scene, is always a contest between the two largest racial groups to determine who will come out “on tap”. The social storm that follows is reminiscent of the after shocks associated with the proverbial struggle between the devil and his wife for the hambone. However, the people associated with Third Force Politics, although seemingly at variance on some issues, appear to be in unison on one front. And that is the need for a fundamental change in this standard of behavior applied by the Guyanese electorate in selecting their Government. It is revolutionary because it will really challenge the modus operandi of political campaigning and all that goes into winning an election. And it is practical because politics based on racial numbers will forever leave somebody out in the cold after every election cycle is over.

The term “Third Force Politics” suggest that there are two other rails of politics in Guyana before this one, and that’s a fact, at least by my thinking. There is the first rail where every party knowingly and consciously panders to its racial or ethnic base, using language that specifically address their concerns, or facilitate an understanding that their concerns are the ones being addressed. The PPP significantly vociferous when there are Indian crime victims, or the PNC modifying condemnation of violence with complains of marginalization are examples of these.

Then there is the second rail where, in an effort to placate and reduce the ammunition of external critics, the two parties indulge in what I call “’feeder sound-bites”. Empty phrases denoting empathy or common cause with the base of their opponents, and which both that base and the politicians themselves recognize as crap. Examples of these are endless, and range from Jagdeo’s comments in Britain that he considered himself President of all the people in Guyana to Corbin’s’ claims that the PNC can win a plurality at the polls. Maybe I am being too harsh on them and they both believe what they are saying, but the voting patterns at elections and tension afterwards suggest that the particular audience they seek to impress have an askance view.

And then we come to the third rail, or what I referred to as “Third Force Politics”. Yes, I know, there have been coalitions before. Yes, I know, there have been attempts by one or more political entities to join together to take down one of the big boys. Listen, this is different. I am not simply talking about the physical coming together of Trotman, and Ramjattan, and Ramsaroop, and Holder etc, etc, etc. I am talking about a political conversation taking place across Guyana and in the Diaspora by others besides the politicians in the forefront. I am talking about a conversation with TK, emotional about the excesses during the years of the PNC, but refusing to allow that to blind or in anyway impede his grasp of what continuance of the status quo implies. I am talking about conversations with and between Roy and Bryan, and Annan, and WoodBoss, and Paul and Peter, the young and maybe the not so very young now, eagerly offering up positive commentary and suggestions that supersede the restrictions of race, and religion and class. Yes, I am talking about Third Force Politics during which conversation moves beyond the boundaries of who did what and when, and engages in how do we deal with this, and then what do we do after.

The revolutionary aspect of Third Force Politics is not only its commitment to take the exercise of selecting a Government beyond a choice based on Race. It is its willingness to condition its success to such a transformation in the electorate. Because that is the only way they can win. They have to change and influence the mindset of the electorate to disengage themselves from a tradition practiced by their parents and grandparents, and this will be no easy task. They have to walk that line their opponents were either reluctant or afraid to trod, and they are willing to do so because it is right, and just, and enabling to our future. And Politics that take Guyana in a direction that is intrinsically right and just and nationally enabling, is indeed revolutionary politics.

Third Force Politics is Practical because it seeks to deal with a situation long on the back burner of press coverage, and not too popular with analysts resident in the two main structures of Guyana’s Politics. But it happens to be the situation around which everything that divides us, that alienates us, and affects our concern for security and quality of life revolves. Some describe it as the Ethnic Dilemma, others choose the way of circumlocution to hint at this basement underbelly of our political reality. But it comes down to one question, and the answer to that question is what makes Third Force Politics a practical alternative for Guyana.

Take a poll, do a survey, but ask this question of the people in the two largest groups in the country and bare the answer for all to see. Will either of the two major Political organizations ever be able to convince the majority of their opponents base that they are capable of acting in their best interests? Go on ask them. Will they ever trust these parties to do what is right, and just, and enabling for communities traditionally loyal and supportive of their opponents, nay their very enemy? We might as well get down to the grimy truth while we are at it. If the answer to that question is affirmative, then Third Force Politics will have a very hard road to travel. But if it is negative, as everyone in Guyana who has not had a lobotomy believe it will be, then Third Force Politics is the only viable situation available to our Nation.

The Third Force, as an organization, will face the same degree of wrath from their opponents for bringing a sense of practical consciousness to the Guyana electorate, as the mythical Prometheus faced from Zeus for bringing fire to mankind. Evidence of this has already been seen in the disjointed attack upon the embryonic organization and some of its prominent members by the PPP’s most pugnacious political pit-bull. But they knew this was not going to be a cake walk when they got into it. Raphael Trotman said that he had reached a point of no return, and was clearly counting on his faith to see him through. Peter Ramsaroop was a soldier, and has clearly demonstrated that backing down is not one of his favorite options. And Kemraj and Sheila strike me as people who will become tougher as the battle gets longer. Bringing up their flank is an assortment of personalities whose gravitation to Third Force Politics convert them to Heroes and Patriots in my book. Now let’s get this Revolution of Political Practicality going.

Keith R Williams
Atlanta, Georgia
keiwillia2111@bellsouth.net

Guyana Could Do With A Few More Peter Ramsaroops

When we use the phrase “Telling it from the mountain” to describe the outpourings of others or even ourselves, we draw the analogy from the proverbial speech made by the Christian Christ from a mountain top to his multitudinous audience below. It means telling it like it is. It means telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But means something even more profound, something more emotionally awakening than say, a pedantic adherence to a standard of actuality. It means appealing to the inner core of your audience, to their soul, to the part of their being that represent the moral consciousness of their humanity. When a son of the soil urges his country kinfolk to move forward with the 3rd Force away from “the putrid politics of the present and past”, forging an alliance that refuses to “pit one race against the other to attain or maintain political power”, that Son Mr. Editor is, “telling it from the mountain top”.

Societies produce all manner of Leadership over time, and generally they mould and adapt their style to confirm with the era, the politics of the day, or the distinctiveness of the constituency they aspire to represent. However, as any brief reconnaissance of the past will substantiate, societies torn by divisive and internecine conflict often produces a quality of leadership that is unique in its approach to the current issues, and tend to leap ahead of the pack in speaking to those issues and advancing ideas and proposals on how best they can be resolved. It is a style of leadership that goes for the high ground, that assigns blame to “we” instead of “they”, that call for changes from among “us” rather than among “them”. It is the kind of leadership in which public utterances take form in the expressions in the piece “Hope is Brimming in Guyana - New Force a People’s Movement“ authored by Peter Ramsaroop, and published by both independent print medias in Guyana.

Martin Luther King at the helm of the civil rights struggles in the United States of America extolled the religious virtues of “peace”, of “love”, of a sense of forgiveness and reconciliation. He urged his followers to develop “a kind of dangerous unselfishness”, of becoming the kind of person who possessed the “capacity to project the “I” into the “thou” in terms of demonstrative compassion and concern for fellow human beings. He spoke acerbically of the then Governor of Alabama whose lips, according to him, were “dripping with words of interposition and nullification“, but he dreamed of the day when the situation would be transformed into one “where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers”. Martin Luther kings’ style of leadership was one that spoke to his followers from the top of the mountain, from the high ground, appealing to that part of their core where the best abstract content of humankind reside. And that is a style of leadership we seem to be in short supply of in these turbulent times in our Nation.

Look, we can spend the remainder of eternity airing our grievances with each other and seeking capitulation by one group to the other in order to achieve a manner of closure consistent with accepted guilt and innocence. Or alternatively, we can, in the words of Peter Ramsaroop, “choose to stamp out the fire of hatreds instilled within us” by the relative few who benefit most from such incendiary group interaction, and “take back our country”. I believe the that the latter is the only credible choice. And since by virtue of years of manipulative cajoling, enticing and coercive efforts, no base group is likely to trust the perceived organizational arm of the other, a transitional exodus towards the new and populous people’s movement of 3rd Force politics should be as natural as osmosis.

Guyana need many more Peter Ramsaroops who are prepared to speak to our people from the mountain top. We had and have every other kind and style of leadership in abundance but this one. I firmly believe, without overtly or covertly making any analogous link between the two personalities, that Martin Luther Kings’ hopes and aspiration in respect of the cognitive growth of his Nation was no different than those being harbored by Peter Ramsaroop in respect of Guyana. And he speaks on it from the mountain top because he understands that you have to cultivate and plant a sense of one-ness, a sense of collective responsibility, a sense of forgiveness and acceptance, in order to harvest the dream of “ONE PEOPLE, ONE NATION AND ONE DESTINY”


Keith R Williams
Atlanta, Georgia
keiwillia2111@bellsouth.net

Is New Orleans A Wake Up Call For Guyana - PART ll

My memory of Georgetown as a kid is that of a beautiful garden city with avenues and walkways in Waterloo and Main Streets among others, where adults could take their kids on Sunday evenings and sit on a bench relaxing while they frolicked in the grass among the Daisys. It was a City consisting of structures that could be described as quaint, whether they were domiciles, educational institutions or commercial premises. Some were huge, like the St George’s Cathedral, considered to be the largest wooden building in the world. Others were dimunitive, like a tiny wooden cottage I passed each day on my way to primary school. Some were made of concrete and mortar, like the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception or “Brickdam” as we were wont to call it. Others were completely wooden, like St George’s of course, and Christ Church and The Public Hospital. License plates all seem to begin with PA or PB in those days, and the Ducati Motor Cycle was the most noisiest of human contraptions possible. I can remember the rainy periods when the drains and trenches alongside the sidewalks and roadways would become torrential waterways channeling the excess waters at a fast and un-impeded clip through the raised koker gates and into the Demerara River. You could swim in the flowing waters back in the day, and building wooden toy boats powered by paper sails and racing them in the waterways was a favorite pastime for us kids during the rainy season. I know this nostalgic wandering down memory lane might elicit raised eyebrows or mental queries as to its purpose. It is quite simple. You cannot grasp the significance of the changes the City and its environs have undergone without first conjuring up an image of what it was like back in the day.

Does anyone remember the Punt Trench Dam, with high bridges across it fashioned thus to allow the passage of horse drawn steel pontoons moving cane from the Durban backlands to Diamond Sugar Estates? That was a favorite Sunday swimming area for much of the City, back in the day before Luckhoo Pool was constructed. But importantly, it was an integral part of the drainage system in the City. And their were other canals, like the one alongside upper Sussex Street we called Barbados, and with similar waterways running alongside Princess Street, North and South Road, and Lamaha Street to name a few. They were all part of the drainage system, capturing and channeling overflows from rain through the open kokers into the Demerara River. Visiting those areas now one experiences cultural shock over the environmental deterioration that has taken place, and a strengthened premonition that the worse is yet still to come.

The Punt Trench Dam was filled up during the reign of the PNC, maybe for the same reason the steam rail system was dismantled and rendered obsolete. The Leaders in Government at that time perhaps envisioned a modern Capital with road connections everywhere. Why the hell should we cling on to stinking 19th century transportation technology, was the response they probably gave to those who far sightedly challenged the transformation. It is a pity that the decision makers did not travel to London or New York and acquaint themselves with the efficiency of the rail systems in those two populous metropolitan areas. Maybe the fact that two developed Nations were still clinging on to their rail transportation system might have served to disengage them from the stupid notions circulating around and in their minds at that time. That they jettisoned the bird they held in their hands before securing the one soaring almost out of reach above their heads, is a conclusion as clear as light today. The other canals were not deliberately filled up although they might well have been, given the state they are in today. Poor maintenance and no maintenance of these canals over ensuing years increasingly resulted in them becoming blocked and clogged with all manner of residue and debris, and the koker gates overwhelmed by slush and silt. When garbage collection became extinct, the canals became the preferred dumping ground for all and sundry, from dead pets and other animals to junk cars. Today human remains have also joined the refuse group found there.

The topographical metamorphosis the City has gone through over the years has positioned us at the point where New Orleans was just before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. The vulnerable parishes in New Orleans have their equivalent in Wards like Queenstown, and Alberttown and outer areas like Kitty, and Bel Air, and Sophia et al. The bulk of the population in the affected parishes in New Orleans were low income, maxing out at about US$11000 per year. The people living in those areas in Guyana likely to be hardest by Tsunami like waters penetrating the Atlantic sea defense system, and flooding waters from heavy seasonal rainfall overwhelming the drainage system, are mostly very poor, might possess a bicycle at best, and have no proximate built up areas to which they can evacuate. The American Federal Government with all of its vast wealth and technology in areas of transportation, communication and health care, was unable to mount the kind of response necessary for the magnitude of the disaster in New Orleans. Does anyone in this life or in this world, even remotely, believe that the Government Guyana could do better when and if our turn arrives?

Flooding as a result of heavier than usual seasonal rainfall is not new to Georgetown and its environs. This has been going on from time immemorial, and is a natural consequence of the low level situation of the City. But back in the day the water ran off much faster, and there were no impending disaster situations as a result of the flooding. The outlets were freer, more passable, perhaps because garbage disposal was routine; remember the M&TC trucks with attendants with pitch forks and huge baskets emptying and carting away the contents of 45 gallon garbage drums positioned in front and to the side of virtually every yard. But even back then the flooding situation suggested that long term residency under current conditions was not feasible, and that some day Mahomet had to decide to go to the mountain, since no amount of technological tinkering was going to produce the kind of protection required. Today, particularly based on happenings earlier this year in Guyana, and the frightening images of what has happened recently in New Orleans, a pull back to higher ground appears to be the inevitable solution. The fact that the people responsible for coming to this final decision might not have even began to ponder its feasibility yet, is a patent example of Nero fiddling away happily while the fire creeps slowly but inexorably towards the tinder boxed housings and protections of the poor.

Keith R Williams
Atlanta, Georgia
keiwillia2111@bellsouth.net

Is New Orleans A Wake Up Call For Guyana?

Greetings folks. Since this is my first posting on this forum I figured I’d begin with some introductory comments that are, truthfully, pre-defensive in nature. You see I am a Baby Boomer rather than a Generation Xer, and inflicted thus with all the inhibitions and anxieties related to this burgeoning information technology. So take these factors into consideration in assessing the format of my presentation, and do not allow criticism to spill over into the content.

I wrote a letter about a week ago and sent it via email for publication in the Letter Columns of our two “independent” print media establishments. The letter asked the question that is the subject matter of this post, and drew attention to comparables in terms of topography, natural and demographic circumstances. My letter, based on daily perusal of these newspapers, apparently could not elude the idiosyncrasies of the censors and gatekeepers of those two media establishments. It has been my observation that editorial and journalistic imagination at these two periodicals is rather narrowly confined, and at times becomes incapacitated thru retrogression to a cognitive developmental period before “objective permanence“. Things that are not of their personal discernment are deemed either, not to exist, or, possess no relevance to the discussion about Guyana. None the less, I must admit that I was elated when I accessed the Kaieteur New this Saturday morning and discovered that they had dedicated their editorial page to the said issue I had raised in my letter. Because in the end, it matters not who is asking these questions or in which forum they are being asked. What is important is that the issue surrounding the viability of the saucer in which our Capital City and proximate population centers are situated, is coming to the fore. And as it begins to infiltrate the fore-ground of our consciousness, it is opportune to ponder whether what occurred in New Orleans is a call to action for us, or whether we have to undergo a similar ordeal before we can be galvanized into action.

It is very important for us to jettison the hype and focus on what really contributed to the dilemma in the Parishes of New Orleans. It was not the gale force winds of Katrina crunching structures into flying cinders, and converting things not connected to realty into Identifiable Flying Objects or IFOs. Nope, that was the case in Alabama and Mississippi not New Orleans. In New Orleans the dilemma was produced by a deluge of water swamping and covering the city, and turning it into grimy lake filled with the spillage from sewers, residual chemicals from oil refineries, and human created garbage and other waste products.
It is said that the city of New Orleans is a bowl surrounded by water kept at bay by a fifteen high levee system. When you close your eyes and say this it is not too difficult to conjure up an image of Georgetown and its environs, and the rapidly eroding concrete sea defense system keeping the waters of the mighty Atlantic at bay. According to reports received so far, there were breaches of the levees, including the main levee where a two block gap is said to have occurred. Close your eyes and visualize incoming tide way above normal breaching the sea wall and pouring down Camp Street, Water Street, Sheriff Street, and across the East Coast Highway. Think about this happening in the midst of heavy rainfall during May or June, or December thru February. Wait a minute. Am I stretching a point here? Am I being unduly alarmist here? The events of early 2005 would clearly suggest that I am not doing either of these things. And if you visit the Flood Website of Bryan McIntosh, I believe the images you will see there would be eerily similar to that of New Orleans today.

In my next post I will deal with some anecdotal history surrounding our present day malady relative to the potential for a devastating flooding of the Capital and certain coastal areas. I am not an engineer, so my opinions, projections and suggestions are not based on technical expertise in the relevant fields of study. I do what we do as Guyanese, i.e. try to offer a common sense and practical explanation for things that might be technical by their very nature, but poignantly understood by virtue of experiential association with their effects and consequences. Until then, bye.

Keith R Williams
Atlanta, Georgia
keiwillia2111@bellsouth.net