An appeal to the protestors; do not beat innocent people

Mar 08, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I will never forget that day. My wife cooked boulanger choka and roti. I was eating that dish and looking at Ronald Waddell on channel 9. The occasion was the post-election violence of 1997.
He literally advocated violence to be perpetrated on East Indians who voted for the PPP. He said Indians who voted for the PNC would be protected. I was one of those Indians that did not vote for the PNC. I never did, and never did vote for the PPP either. Last Monday I voted for an Amerindian presidential candidate, Lenox Shuman.
Violent crowds in an ethnically bifurcated society tend to hurt innocent people. The politicians who incite such mayhem never get touched. I do not like the Indian Prime Minister Modi. I never liked him and detested him for his deliberate action when as First Minister of Gujarat, he allowed days of riots to continue where Muslims were massacred before he sent in troops. For this dastardly act, the US suspended his visa. Innocent people died in Gujarat. Today Modi is Prime Minister of India.
From the clips I have seen where Indians were protesting the electoral irregularities that denied the PPP a victory, I saw unpleasant things. Innocent people were being attacked. The police killed a protestor.
I saw clips of a nurse crying. Protestors up the West Coast attacked her and damaged her car. I appeal to Indian protestors – please do not hurt innocent Guyanese who just want to live and get on with their lives and simply exercised their right to vote. I advise Indian protestors to recognize the fact that they do not know who that nurse voted for. Africans voted for the PPP. More than 3000 of them voted for the PPP in Linden. More than 300 voted for the PPP in Buxton.
This columnist has Black friends who voted for the PPP. If you read this, I will keep appealing to you – do not behave the way the mobs did in 1997 and 2001 in the aftermath of election violence and physically brutalized innocent Indians on the streets of Georgetown.
You have a right to protest over what GECOM did. I was on the panel of Kaieteur Radio on Friday afternoon, and Timothy Jonas lamented the fact that all the condemnations of what GECOM did was just paperwork. I disagreed with him, and told him people will protest and they should protest. I did make the point that in France, as we spoke, people may be protesting President Macron’s pension reforms.
People will not sit down and remain passive if they feel a national election cheated their leaders from holding office. My deeply held belief that at this moment permeates my head, heart, mind, soul and body, is that the PPP won the 2020 elections. It is my inflexible opinion that GECOM corrupted the tabulations of the returns for Region 4. I do believe it will be disastrous to swear in President Granger. His party did not win the election.
Having said all of that, I can understand the anger in people. I believe they have a right to protest. I am in my late sixties and throughout my life I have been in protests that were so many that I believe they run into the thousands. But demonstrators cannot and should not hurt innocent people. The current street activities should not take the shape of ethnic attacks.
I have seen things in those street activities in video clips on Friday that are crude and ugly. I appeal for the third time to the Indian people who are in the streets in the rural areas – please do not attack members that are not from your ethnicity. It is wrong, it is sick, it is irrational. I feel strongly inclined to come among you and give you my support. I may very well do that as we see how the days unfold. But I urge you to demonstrate peacefully.
Guyana is on the brink of something we do not want to see. Here is my appeal again, and again, and again – leave innocent people alone. I know how my kid felt when I came home twice after nearly losing my life in political protest. I know how the child of that nurse felt when her mother came home with a damaged car. I stress again, you have every right to confront GECOM on what it did, but do it peacefully. I beseech you. I beg you. Please don’t do crazy things.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)

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