Latest update April 9th, 2025 12:59 AM
Dec 21, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I hope at least one member from the PPP benches in Parliament during the no-confidence motion today says to Dr. Scotland, “Mr. Speaker I beg for your generosity, to have your permission to point my finger directly at the Honourable Member, the Prime Minister, and ask why did he stop two Guyanese stalwarts – Dr. David Hinds and Lincoln Lewis – from writing their columns in the Chronicle. If he cannot offer this House an explanation, then I urge members of ANPU and the AFC to vote in favour of this motion.”
The leadership of the PNC and AFC have been tormented since the no-confidence motion was tabled. Those leaders believe that two MPs from the Coalition will vote for the motion. Should that happen, then fresh elections have to be called in three months’ time.
In my conceptualization of power in Guyana, I don’t believe APNU+AFC deserves to continue in office. We all have our opinions and short of libel and nasty characterization, natural law dictates that we have a right to express them. In my opinion, the one situation among countless others that should cause the Coalition to fall in Parliament today, is that Chronicle scandal.
It caused me psychic laceration when it happened. To think that for twenty-three years we fought against party and government domination of the state media and to think that the budget allocation in 2012 for the state media was cut because of such domination. Now today the PNC and AFC are in power and they reject not two school boys, not two recent UG graduates, not two activists who just came on the scene, but two of Guyana’s staunchest pro-democracy fighters, whose praxis go way back to the seventies, from writing opinion pieces in the Chronicle.
I am saying boldly, graphically and unambiguously, this Chronicle scandal is plausible justification for the current ruling coalition to lose the no-confidence vote. Since it happened earlier this year, I taunt Lincoln Lewis each time I see him about the anticipated showdown between him and Nagamootoo.
At the wake of Bevon Currie last Saturday, we sat at the same table and I turned to him with a broad smile on my face and said, “Lincoln, you know Moses coming at the wake later.” With his inimitable expression and with an equally broad smile, Lincoln replied; “What is he coming here for?” Of course I was only taunting Lincoln.
The moral egregiousness, political depravities and philosophical emptiness of the post-2015 construct in Guyana are so volcanic, tragic, traumatic, that such a formation should not continue to administer this poverty-stricken, unmodern land that cries out for a future, a dream that has eluded this nation since Independence.
I had a long exchange with brother/sister team of the Fernandes from Bartica outside the AFC office last Friday evening. Juretha Rodrigues is the head of the AFC’s youth arm. With my dog in my arms, I asked Juretha to use all her intellectual talent and tell me why she supports the AFC.
After one hour, she couldn’t do that. I think she could, but she wouldn’t, because she knew her points would not easily stand up. The points of any supporter of the APNU+AFC government cannot stand up. I once wrote two years ago in these columns that no government since Independence made so many mistakes and was so unpopular in its first year in office as APNU+AFC. It has been a sad and woeful show. If they were a rock band on stage, the audience would have turned off the lights and pelted them with firecrackers.
But if APNU+AFC loses today in parliament, the world will shudder. Look who is the alternative. Half of this country is below 25, according to the US Ambassador. You put the PPP back, those kids have absolutely no future. This country has been ruined by the presidencies of Jagdeo and Ramotar. Everywhere you go in this country you see pyrotechnical manifestations of the tragic years of the long knives of the PPP. No semantic sophistication is needed. Simply put – the PPP destroyed this country!
The following lines are true. At the wake of Dr. Benjamin Singh, Donald Ramotar was leaving and Major-General Joe Singh escorted him out. He began to shake hands with people as he walked out the yard. A woman next to me, turned to me and said, ‘But he ain’t got no bodyguards.”
Here are some lines from Steel Pulse’s famous, great and politically inspired reggae hit song, “Bodyguard.”
Bodyguard, I wouldn’t like your job
Snakes in the grass say they know not God
Polytricksters drinking human blood
A concrete heart can hold no love…
Apr 09, 2025
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