What Happened to the WPA?
The Working People’s Alliance is a political party which I have a deep sense of appreciation for. This was the political party of Walter Rodney and Eusi Kwayana, two Pan-Africanists who were important influences on my own development. I also heard stories from my mom about how she used to attend WPA rallies to listen to Walter Rodney speak. She also helped to hide placards for WPA members, so the WPA is a political party which I have a very deep connection to.
This is why the conduct of the WPA since 2015 has been very disappointing to me. In 2015, the APNU+AFC coalition was elected to office in Guyana. I give credit to the WPA for speaking out against many of the problems within the coalition, but it was also apparent during this period of time that the WPA was a poor fit. I felt that the WPA should have left the coalition rather than remain in a political party where the WPA was not appreciated, but this did not happen.
Since 2020 after the coalition lost the election, certain members of the WPA have engaged in rhetoric which seems contrary to the original vision of what the WPA stood for. The recent remarks by Tacuma Ogunseye are an example of this. Ogunseye has been receiving much backlash for his remarks, including a response video by President Irfaan Ali. Ogunseye, referring to Africans who are in the security forces in Guyana, stated that when they turn those guns in the right direction, “it’s over.”
The remarks are being condemned by the PPP because these remarks seem to be a call for violence on the part of Ogunseye. Not only are remarks such as this dangerous in a country which already has a history of racial violence, but it is not smart politics. The hope and support which the APNU+AFC received in 2015 when they were elected into office has since been squandered. A clear example of this is the fact that the OVP, which contested the local elections in Guyana in 2020, had backed the APNU+AFC, but revoked this support when the APNU+AFC attempted to rig the election.
Since losing the election, the coalition has not done very much to bring those supporters back. The message which the opposition has decided to utilize since 2020 is that Guyana is now an apartheid state in which African Guyanese are being oppressed by the racist PPP government, but the reality is that poor African Guyanese and poor Indian Guyanese have always suffered, regardless of who was in power. The whole point of the WPA was that it was supposed to be a party which challenged the racialized nature of Guyana’s politics by promoting a political ideology based on the needs of the working class. That unfortunately has not been the message which ones hears from the WPA nowadays.
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Dwayne is the author of The Political and Intellectual Legacy of Walter Rodney
