Aung San Suu Kyi and the personalities in Guyanese politics
Kaieteur News – Fareed Zakaria has included an article from the journal “Foreign Affairs” by Sebastian Strangio (“The Myanmar Mirage: Why the West got Burma Wrong”) in which Strangio made the following statement: “Hidden from view prejudices and the proclivities that Aung San Suu Kyi shared with many of her fellow ethnic Burmese, as well as a character that tended toward seeming rigidity and intolerance of criticism… ”[by] 2018, it was clear that Western observers did not know Aung San Suu Kyi as well as they might have imagined at one time. ”
In her long years of combating military rule, Suu Kyi became an international hero in search of the Nobel Peace Prize. Then her party took power and the woman we saw as a global icon revealed her true colors. He became a brass protector of the same army that imprisoned him for many years. He defended the massacre of Burmese Muslims from the position of racial instinct.
Which country does Suu Kyi remind you of? What political personalities does Suu Kyi remind you of? Power does ugly, sick, crazy things to people that, before they acquired it, you think of them as special, good human beings that the world doesn’t often produce.
Reading Zakaria’s highlight of Strangio’s psycho-political depiction of Suu Kyi, vivid, compelling thoughts of Guyanese politics and its world-class actors rumbled all over me. As thoughts consumed me, I went straight to the keyboard and composed this column before I forgot what I wanted to convey.
One of the vicious trends in politics, especially in the late 20th century, is that dictatorial power brings activists with crossover energy that obscures their ugly minds and excessive taste for power. Someone long ago told me that men who joined the Catholic priesthood were not out of religious convictions but hidden sexual preferences.
The person had no anti-homosexual feelings whatsoever. He felt he knew what was factual. I believe it. Believing it does not mean you are anti-homosexual. It’s the same in politics. There are human beings out there who want power, who want to taste the power that goes with being prime minister or president. There is no deep desire to transform their country or leave an endowment.
So many names I could cite but space would not allow for extended discussion but Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Alexis Tsipras of Greece are two examples of current politics that come to mind. Sarkozy never had any intention of becoming a transitional president. He wanted only five years of power. Tsipras was stunned as prime minister and was quite happy to enjoy it for the few years when he knew full well that he would not be re-elected.
So many names are pouring out of my head in Guyana but the images of four of them are in my face right now. Three of them are Rupert Roopnaraine, Khemraj Ramjattan and Raphael Trotman. All three had extensive state powers as ministers. The fourth is Eusi Kwayana. It did not have ministerial status but it displayed the deep Freudian foundations of Suu Kyi – an embrace of ethnic belonging.
I have written a lot on Kwayana and I can hardly think of anything new about his character. But I will say this briefly – we in and out of Guyana didn’t even have a fleeting understanding of how extensive the racing stamp was on his mind. He probably figured at his age (96) that it was time to bring what he always nourished into his psyche – that Guyana should have a Black government controlling it whether by free election or not.
Rupert Roopnaraine’s behavior of power was as shocking to me as Kwayana’s descent into tribalism. I met with Dr. Roopnaraine when he returned to Guyana in 1976 when I was in my second year as an AS student. He never impressed me as a revolutionary who can lose himself among the masses. His class elitism was too graphic and vain.
Despite my knowledge of his relationship with many top Forbes Burnham government personnel, it came as an unbelievable shock that when in parliament, he voted against releasing the report of the Commission of Investigation into the murder of Walter Rodney. Finally, Trotman and Ramjattan. These two men deceived the whole world. No Guyanese can look into the mirror and say that they were not surprised at the excessive drunkenness these two men displayed after they became a huge authority recipient in 2015. In a Foreign Affairs article, the author refers to the end of Suu Kyi. In Guyana there is the end of Roopnaraine, Trotman, Ramjattan and Kwayana. What a tragedy.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.)