SOCIETAL psyche has been conditioned to celebrate male machismo that is mainly physical-based, with scant consideration, and even scantier applause, for the merits of all the ways women supersede male strengths and achievements; and even today, when an era is emerging where women are striding heights unimaginable in yesteryears, that challenge men in practically every arena where it has been pre-dispositioned to male dominance to emerge with even superior achievements, because women are pushing the boundaries and establishing capabilities and capacities where the male animal has not even aspired to.In Guyana, this synergy was precipitated by a forward-thinking man whose recognition that one human being has the same pre-condition to excellence in achievement as another – notwithstanding class, religion, gender; or any other societal barrier preceded his struggles for human rights, social equity, and the upholding of all that enhances human dignity; and he even took that struggle to the international community of nations.
Dr. Cheddi Jagan, Liberator of Guyana, Father of the Nation, and the Mahatma of the Western Hemisphere, was a man out of his times and thinking; and he refused to bow to the prevailing concepts of his era that women are lesser creatures – such a consideration was not even on his radar; hence he always strode into every fray with his wife Janet firmly by his side, even recognising the advantages of her advancing before him in some instances – such as with the establishment of the women’s arm of his political movement and socio-political struggles – first the WPEO, then the WPO, a cadre that was the wind beneath the wings of many victories against oppressive forces in this land all Guyanese call home.
Within the political landscape, because women often took centre-stage in many areas of struggle in the first-established PPP through the dynamics inculcated through Dr. Jagan’s recognition that women were a strength rather than a weakness in any socio-political demographic, when LFS Burnham forced a split in the PPP he took with him women who had been forged into tensile steel through the fires of political struggle; and thus first the Burnham faction of the PPP, which later morphed into the PNC, emerged with a women’s arm almost as strong as the WPO – the WRSM: Women who were no less dynamic and goals-oriented – albeit the goals were in different directions, than WPO members, such as Viola Burnham, and of recent times the late Deborah Backer, Faith Handing, Clarissa Rhiel, and Vanessa Kissoon, among others.
But while the leadership of the PPP continues to celebrate, motivate and equate strong women, the Opposition collective continually denigrates and degrades women standing firm in their resolve and refusing to compromise on their convictions, their integrity and their principles – especially in the execution of their respective mandates; regardless of societal misconceptions of rights and wrongs, of diplomacy that borders on hypocrisy, of acceptance of foreign invasion and violation of the sovereignty of the Republic of Guyana, of transgressions – repeated endlessly despite advocacies and advisories that diplomatic envoys were transgressing against the hospitality of this host country and violating diplomatic norms and conventions, even to the point of breaking international laws and requisite behavioural patterns, of rejecting sycophancy to an offending and offensive envoy of a very powerful nation; and also of confronting pertinent issues that relegate female members of a particular Opposition party to mere ‘squaws’ instead of giving them their rightful positions of respect and equity as merits their contributions and commitment to their Party’s cause, such as the treatment meted out to PNC stalwarts like Faith Harding and Vanessa Kissoon, and former AFC member Gowmattie Singh.
It is to be hoped that Vanessa Kissoon can rally her leadership skills and engage her community into productive endeavours, like Faith Harding has done to demonstrate what the male supremacists in their party never learnt – that leadership is about caring and developing ways to enhance lives rather than self-aggrandizement and the mere pursuit of power for power’s sake.
The joint Opposition, with leverage provided by opposition media, especially the Kaieteur News, has intermittently vengefully pursued several women with their normal vitriolic invectives and pejoratives – in both the PPP and PNC ranks, who have refused to bend their knees to the male machismo of Opposition leaders and supporters, with most recent victims being Acting Town Clerk Carol Sooba – endlessly vilified in the most despicable ways by Hamilton Green and his cohorts; PNC Parliamentarian Vanessa Kissoon, assaulted and degraded by her party’s leadership; and Education Minister Priya Manickchand.
The latter, in the spirit of militancy in defence of the sovereignty of Guyana, bearded the foreign snake in his cave and, with a precise, clearly defined but uncompromising address, presented with great style and elan, wrote finis to an episode of great disgrace to the representative of a guest nation hosted on Guyana’s soil, who has violated the hospitality of this country at so many levels and in such diverse ways that he has forever blackened himself and reputation in the annals of Guyana’s history of hosting foreign envoys since Guyana won independence from the British colonisers.
His violation of Guyana’s territorial integrity continued on the eve of his departure from this land when he again crossed all diplomatic boundaries, taking advantage of his captive audience at a function organised by his embassy in celebration of a USA landmark in its history, to again interfere in this country’s internal affairs by casting aspersions on this country’s Government and people in extremely undiplomatic and derogatory language, reflecting his lack of diplomacy and his disrespect for a sovereign state to which he is a guest.
This was merely one of his multiplicity of transgressions against this sovereign state, listed among them being disrespectful to our Head-of-State; insulting Ministers of Government, and even encouraging anarchy and civil war in a country where he was welcomed three years ago. Of course this merited a fitting response from this sovereign state of the Republic of Guyana, which the Government of Guyana, through the medium of Acting Foreign Affairs Minister Priya Manickchand, delivered in fine style in denouement of the Machiavellian anti-Government/pro-opposition plots, programmes and strategies devised, supported, implemented and encouraged by U.S. Ambassador Brent Hardt.
The entire Guyana should have been proud of Minister Priya Manickchand for her grace and courage under fire as she delivered the coup de grace on Brent Hardt.
However, instead of well-deserved plaudits for forthrightly condemning someone who used his diplomatic immunity to repeatedly violate the hospitality of Guyana, those who had enjoyed the largesse of the unrepentant Hardt exhibited the proverbial ‘fish market’ syndrome by attempting to drown the voice of Minister Priya Manickchand, with Nigel Hughes even refusing to allow her the use of a microphone.
But ‘leader’ of the AFC, Khemraj Ramjattan, conscious of Opposition’s need for US funding, with his remarks denouncing Manickchand’s action – especially with his reference to ‘Sitira gyal’, with all the implications and inference of prostitute-like behaviour inherent in his language and rhetoric, has encapsulated all the Opposition’s concept of the place a woman should hold in the socio-economic framework of a country, despite its public shows to encourage female voters by giving token positions to a few females within their ranks.
However, they should emulate the example of the PPP which, guided by the principles of its founding father, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, empowers women to challenge and breach hitherto socio-political parameters, very much in the spirit of Cheddi and Janet Jagan’s freedom struggles.
Ironically, in emulating Janet Jagan by using strong language in defence of this nation, Priya Manickchand is a product of the USA concept of democracy; so Hardt’s undemocratic ‘democracy’ projects and rantings had formidable opposition – emerging out of USA spirit of struggles against oppressive forces, to which Hardt himself alluded.
The only problem is our freedom has already been won – by the PPP and Dr. Cheddi in October of 1992; so his ‘democracy’ project and his advocacy for civil war is unnecessary; because our democracy was won through democratic processes by a leader who always refused to succumb to adjurations to take this country and people via a route of violence to the ultimate goal of peace, progress and prosperity in a united nation – a concept to which Opposition elements remain strangers.
Because there has never been and will never be any need for physical confrontations when the PPP boasts such weapons as brilliant minds, patriotic dispositions and razor-sharp intelligence and tongues of a Priya Manickchand.
Source: https://guyanachronicle.com/2014/07/13/on-strong-guyanese-women-and-priyas-denouement-of-brent-hardt