At the wake of Oliver Hinckson

Jun 30, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I’m in my sixties and I have known Oliver Hinckson since I was young. That means I have known Oliver for a very long time. Then at the turn of the 21st century, he became my student at UG and we got to know each other better because I spent an inordinate time with him on his essays in philosophy. Unfortunately, Oliver Hinckson passed away last week.
Throughout our friendship, he would say to me; “I see much of myself in you.” I never knew what he meant by that. I never asked him. It puzzled me because though I would say we had a politically trusting relationship. I think our political activism was based on different strands. At the wake on Thursday night at the Georgetown Football Club on North Road, I asked Dr. Mark Kirton why he thought Hinckson liked me when our politics had huge shades of difference. I am not at liberty to disclose Mark’s explanation.
I am sorry Hinckson had to die at this time. And by this time, I mean the present juncture where Guyana is virtually bankrupt in terms of visionary and transformational leadership. I wish the PPP vanishes in the wilderness but I honestly think that our present leadership in government (without exception but more so Granger and Nagamootoo) is so ordinary and devoid of competence and thinking that it certainly poses a clear and present danger to the future of Guyana.
Someone like Hinckson’s voice would have been a prerequisite for our young people needing to be shown the way forward.
It is too early after his death to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of his activism. And it would take more than one column to elaborate. I certainly supported his cynical approach to power.
Hinckson felt that from Burnham to Granger, all presidents failed Guyanese and he had no admiration for them. But he was hopelessly trapped in the politics of ethnicity, brought on by the nature of the PPP rule. I think a fine group of multi-racial African Guyanese allowed the abominable ethnic bias in the PPP to imprison their multi-racial activism.
There are very many admirable multi-racial African Guyanese that I have known for decades who will support the PNC in government, now and in the future, because of the horrible taste of race bias that characterized the long rule of Jagdeo and Ramotar. Some of these names are in the WPA.
They explain that the alternative to the PNC is the race-baiting Indian cabals of the PPP. In such a situation, they will support the political wrongdoings and ethnically driven policies of the present administration rather than having the PPP back in power. This scenario vividly reminds me of good multi-racial Indians who condoned the cruel, bestial ethnic excesses of presidents Jagdeo and Ramotar because they didn’t want a Black government in power at all in Guyana.
This was where Oliver Hinckson came in. Hinckson was too smart to put his faith in a Black state machinery just because it was a Black government. I didn’t support his position on Buxton during the reign of violence there and I told him why. And the difference with him from others of his type was that he was rational and analytical to see where you were coming from.
I remember once telling him that Ronald Waddell’s public warning to East Indians over Channel 9 in the aftermath of the 2011 general election results that Indians who didn’t vote for the PPP to seek shelter of safety was a horribly unforgiving thing to say.
I told Oliver that in our country, Indians and Blacks instinctively vote racially, why single out Indians. And he agreed that Waddell was wrong. That was what I liked about Oliver Hinckson. In the latter years of his life, he became deeply disgusted with the shape of politics. I felt sad when one day he told me, he was finished with politics. I couldn’t believe this was the man I knew for over four decades.
The wake offered me an opportunity to talk to important people that I hardly see and whose views and opinions are important for my work as an analyst. I found not one supporter of the APNU+AFC Administration who is not worried about the mistakes the government is making. Many feel that Guyana needs visionary character to guide it and that is not forthcoming.
Not one, not even one person saw the wisdom of this government dropping the Chronicle columns of David Hinds and Lincoln Lewis. All agreed that the decision reminded Guyanese wherever they are that the present leaders are doing the same things they criticized the PPP for perpetuating.

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