“Night of the long knives”

Back in Germany circa 1934, Adolf Hitler decided to make his final push for total, undisputed power over his country. Of course, he had already written Mein Kampf, and the extermination of six million Jews and a war to end all wars was already on his megalomaniacal mind. He became convinced that a rival group to his Nazis posed a threat to his plans. So he invited its leadership to a meeting and later announced that sixty-one of them had been executed; thirteen had been shot resisting arrest and three had committed suicide.

Hitler called it “Night of the Long Knives” and explained: “In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason.”

This was the turning point in modern German history and when the German people accepted Hitler’s violation of all the norms of German civilisation, there was no turning back. Hitler was now the supreme ruler of Germany who had the right to be judge and jury, and had the power to decide whether people lived or died.

Since that time, whenever a democratically elected leader goes egregiously beyond the bounds of political propriety to betray others and hide behind the skirt of ‘for the people’s good’ it has been referred to as “Night of the Long Knives”. After British PM McMillan fired half of his cabinet, one opponent mocked him after that Night of the Long Knives: “Greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his friends for his life.”

On the night of April 26, Guyana had its Night of the Long Knives. The opposition APNU and the AFC took their one-seat majority and eviscerated the Budget to the tune of Gy$20 billion. Swearing like Hitler that they know what was ‘good’ for the Guyanese people, Messrs Ramjattan and Nagamootoo of the AFC and David Granger of the APNU/ AFC became the judge and jury to decide in which direction the country should go.

They threw hundreds of employees into the streets; effectively eliminated the government news agency; defanged the anti-drug agency CANU that was in the forefront of dealing with that menace threatening to overrun our country and reduced the proposed subsidy intended to prevent an electricity tariff hike for the rest of the country, excepting Linden. Perversely they refused to approve the phasing down of the subsidy for the latter town that would have seen its residents still paying only half of what the rest of the country are paying.

But the literal unkindest cut of all, and the largest in amount – Gy$18 billion – was to the visionary flagship Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) that has earned Guyana kudos from many countries and multilateral agencies concerned with sustainable development within the context of global warming and climate change. What made the cut unbelievable and arbitrary was the rationale offered by the opposition parties: the money for the projects was not yet handed over.

In addition to breaking tradition to seize control of the Speaker’s Chair (and the Deputy) and the Committee of Selection, the opposition is once again pushing the envelope to conduct a personal vendetta against the architect of the LCDS – former President Bharrat Jagdeo. The opposition is perfectly aware that the monies from GRIF had not been handed over because of the need to identify specific projects. Now that the government has done so – including 11 thousand solar systems to 150 hinterland communities – the opposition would cut our nose to spoil our face.

After this demonstration of the willingness to bring out and wield the ‘long knives’, it is our considered judgement that the government’s programmes will consistently be subverted henceforth by the opposition. Snap elections might appear to be the only option to save Guyana.