OPINION: Ramcharan falls into a right-wing trap

Last Updated on Sunday, 1 September 2024, 22:31 by Writer

By Dr. Randy Persaud, Professor Emeritus, American University, Washington DC.

“Anne Applebaum is an acerbic right-wing journalist…” (Susan Watkins, New Left Review, 126, Nov./Dec. 2020).

Good writers always state their central arguments as directly as possible, and with the greatest clarity. The more you get away from clarity, the more you force the reader to ask questions about intentions, motive, and most of all, about integrity. Dr. Bertie Ramcharan’s article in the media (August 27, 2024) on the subject of democracy and autocracy in Guyana comes to mind. The issues of motive and integrity loom large here.

I rather doubt that Dr. Ramcharan is principally concerned with Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy Inc. What is more likely, is that he wants to write in support of those opposed to the current PPPC administration, but prefers to do so in the spirit of scholarly remove, in the language of academic neutrality, and with the flair of liberal cosmopolitanism. The Guyanese people are, however, well aware of these elliptical maneuvers, these pretentiously esoteric intellectual dances, these attempts to kill progress and hold back development of our people and country.

These anti-PPP folks always do their destructive work in the name of advancing civic culture, protecting democracy, and building good governance.

What is more likely is that since Ramcharan cannot credibly label the PPP undemocratic, he decided to slide in those accusations under the guise of a book review. The question then is: why would someone like Ramcharan, who as a UN man, is dedicated to real liberal ideas like multilateralism, hitch his political wagon to a bona fide right-wing ideologue? The answer is simple. Applebaum is used as a ‘brand name’ to legitimize his ridiculous claims about the current PPP administration. Unfortunately, Applebaum is a terrible subterfuge. In what follows, I explain why this is so.

Let us get something that Dr. Ramcharan does not seem to understand. Anne Applebaum is no democrat. In economics, she is an unreconstructed neoliberal. In international security and world order, she thinks non-Western states and peoples have nothing to offer, and in culture, she is a highfalutin elitist who uses ‘meritocracy’ to camouflage her aristocratic propensities.

I have no idea why anyone might see anything remotely constructive or relevant in Applebaum’s writings to Guyana. Yet, Dr. Ramcharan has tried. His idea is that the PPP is hostile to NGOs, and the PNC is predisposed to rigging. The first observation is flawed and politically motivated; the second is accurate, but does not need someone currently living in Poland to tell us so. Let us examine the flawed NGO thesis.

There are two things that are central to the rights of NGOs and civic life. The first is the right to freely form, organize, and work without fear of reprisals, or being materially subjected to harassment or other forms of punitive measures. The second is to enjoy free speech to its fullest in any form, format, or modality. I challenge Dr. Bertie Ramcharan to provide evidence that these two fundamental aspects of NGO rights have been violated in Guyana.

Ramcharan must know that some organizations that claim to be NGOs or ‘civic’ are deeply connected to politics in Guyana. When these organizations make public statements, others in the society have every right to respond to them. Further, when these organizations put out lopsided or conspicuously inaccurate information aimed at ruining effective governance, the administration governing the country has a responsibility to correct the record. The fact that Dr. Ramcharan himself can get his highly flawed claims published in a major national newspaper only highlights the point that Guyana is a fully open society.

One organization that claims to be ‘civic’ has had the same person as its leader since 1979. Is it ‘illiberal’ to criticize that fact? Another organization is connected to the WPA and many of its members are WPA political activists who unnecessarily racialize societal issues. Should they be left to do damage without anyone responding? A third organization regularly claims that Guyanese of African descent who support the PPPC are ‘house slaves’. This same organization and a slew of writers associated with it regularly employ violent rhetoric to achieve political objectives. Should they be left to spew their vitriolic bile without any response from state authorities?

Ramcharan attempts to use Applebaum’s Manichean bifurcation of the world into the saved and the dammed. Much of this bifurcation is based on anachronistic civilizational assumptions, the primary one being that people of color cannot govern themselves. Accordingly, I feel compelled to argue that Anne Applebaum’s judgement about liberal and illiberal societies has traces of civilizational bias, something that Ramcharan fails to grasp.

Her profoundly Eurocentric egoism is noted by Eldar Mamedov who calls attention to Applebaum’s belief that the “language of democracy, anti-corruption, and justice originates in the democratic world, our [Western] world” (Mamedov, April 5, 2022). Applebaum is clearly ignorant or dismissive of the fact that countries like Guyana fought for their freedom and the right to exist in the modern world system as free and independent states.

If Mr. Ramcharan were to convince Ms. Applebaum to advise him and the AFC on Guyana, I predict she will suggest the following: scrap public education and let parents pay for private schools; scrap all public healthcare; discontinue all government provided house lots; stop the Because We Care Grant to students; stop free testing of students for sight and hearing; stop subsidies for diabetes care; stop subsidies to pensioners for water and electricity; scrap the GOAL scholarships; do not proceed with free tuition to UG; disband trade unions; quarantine left political parties; divest all state-owned companies and parastatals; sell the rain forest to the highest bidder; fire half of the public service staff, and also provide a list of all benefits that citizens receive because they too do not fit the neoliberal agenda, and will be removed. As for civil society groups and NGOs, they have never had it better than now.

Finally, it must be noted that Anne Applebaum’s work on liberal and illiberal societies lacks originality. Fareed Zakaria has done much better work in this area, and this despite the fact that his PhD adviser was none other than Samuel P. Huntington who hatched the idea of The Clash of Civilizations. And if Dr. Ramcharan wants to read about the future of world order, he should look at the work of Professor Amitav Acharya.

Dr. Randy Persaud, is Adviser, International Affairs, Office of the President.