I went begging on Regent Street and Ryhaan Shah helped

May 31, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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During the election campaign, I took a group of AFC youth activists with me to go begging downtown in the commercial centres for anything that the AFC campaign could use.
The business community was generous. We got anything we asked for – computers, fridges, phones, microwave, etc.  There were two hilarious moments. One storeowner did not have anything we could use, but the owner insisted and gave us a small coffee-maker that could only facilitate one cup at a time. It still sits unused in the Region Four office of the AFC headquarters on Railway Line.
Secondly, a beverage company gave us two cartons of juice. I didn’t look to see what type of juice he donated. I just picked the stuff up and put it in the trunk of my jeep. The next day Michael Carrington in the office of the AFC said to me, “Wuh you bring deh maan, duh thing is tea.” The owner gave us a tea drink that the campaigners at the AFC office couldn’t stomach. Each time, I was rebuked about the tea in the office, I thought of how unpredictable human nature is.
I took the group to cloth stores because every day at the AFC office, flag-making was done. We wanted green and yellow fabric. Those were the colours of the coalition. I went into the store of Indian rights activist (who I applied the term ethnic supremacist to), Ryhaan Shah. She was generous. She was sitting next to her dad, I approached, told her what I wanted, she got up, went to the stands and gave one bolt each of the two colours.
Days later, I saw Ms. Shah’s letter in the press extolling the virtues of her ethnicity and the culture associated with her ethnicity, her condemnation of the past PNC Government and her subliminal Apan Jaat message to voters.
Shah was subtle. She did not say vote for your race. She masked that advocacy by asserting that the past PNC Government did wrong things to Indian people. I was taken back when I read her letters. Just a week before I was in this lady’s store and she didn’t have to give me anything, but she was generous.
Shah’s expressions were followed by some serious condemnations of the PNC Government and formidable praise for Indians who embrace their race and culture by Hindu priest, Aksharananda.
The 2015 election will be remembered for some unbelievable racially determined polemics by some prominent East Indians who no doubt are nice people but didn’t want Guyana to ever again have an African-Guyanese president. The list included journalists Shaun Samaroo (hope they move him from the Chronicle) and Leon Suseran (who was dismissed by the Kaieteur for journalistic bias in the Bheri Ramsaran incident with Sherlina Nageer); academic, Baytoram Ramharack; former exiled PPP minister, Asgar Ally; and Professor Lomarsh Roopnarine from the diaspora.
I am still to grasp how such minds function. The choice for me during the election was a decent Guyanese, David Granger, versus a worn-out, spent politician who had failed Guyana, Donald Ramotar. Who cared about the texture of their hair? The issue was Guyana.
Since the election, a letter was published in the Stabroek News by two well-known Guyanese Indians lamenting what they see as my attack on Aksharananda. They described what they see as the virtuous qualities of Aksharananda. This is what is so intriguing about the ethnic supremacists who threw in their support for the PPP in the last few days of the campaign.
Most people would admit that these people aren’t devilish Guyanese who are rabid racist preachers. I openly acknowledge that Ms. Shah was generous. No doubt Aksharananda does positive community work in Region Three. But what must have jolted one’s soul as one read what these people wrote is that they do not want an African head of government in their country. And why not? Why is an East Indian mannequin a better person than a respected, African-Guyanese nationalist?
Will these people finally accept that in leading Guyana, race does not matter? I doubt it. Look what Dr. Lomarsh Roopnarine wrote. He chastised the Stabroek News for publishing statements of poll on Election Day with the accusation that the publication of such influenced those who were yet to vote. That is immense ignorance.
Even a school boy knows that what the statement of poll is – the paper that tells us who won the election after the vote was counted. If we agree that it is not a mistake then an explanation has to follow. There was a Freudian determinant when Roopnarine penned his accusation against the Stabroek News. He was expressing his preference in the election battle. He wanted an Indian to win. Why? Because he is an Indian.

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