Questions maybe Messrs Bhagwan and Kwayana may never answer

Mar 13, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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It came as quite a surprise to me to see Dr. Nigel Westmaas, Moses Bhagwan and Eusi Kwayana, three admirable WPA fighters for democracy in the 1970s writing on the election impasse.
I would never have imagined that they still would want to make their views public because I felt they essentially had retired from activism except for a letter joined by Andaiye a year ago on how the government handled the sugar industry .
I also came to this conclusion based on the complete absence of any public comment they have made about nightmarish use of state power since 2015. Messrs Kwayana and Bhagwan are in advanced age. Eusi is 95, Moses is 88. I honestly felt that with those years, behind them, they have earned their entitlement to carry on their lives without having to endure the nervousness that characterizes living in Guyana.
A few days ago, Guyanese saw an important statement by these two elderly statesmen that was set against the backdrop of the current crisis, advocating power-sharing.
One is compelled to ask Kwayana and Bhagwan if they didn’t see an aggravation process taking place since 2015 in the corridors of power that made power-sharing possibilities more difficult to discuss and ironically made the power-sharing narrative more exigent.
I have virtually unlimited respect and sacred embrace for Eusi and Moses but I am wondering out loudly on two thing that are tearing away at my patience – where were their pen and voice since 2015 and why because of that long absence from critical thoughts on Guyana they think their message will receive embrace without questioning?
There can hardly be any dispute in my opinion that the most gifted opportunity for putting power-sharing advocacy in the air were the results of the 2015 election results. It was almost a tie. One can say seriously, it was a tie. The margin of victory for APNU+AFC was zero point three percent.
Brothers Kwayana and Bhagwan missed a priceless occasion to use 2015 and 2016 to keep the power-sharing narrative alive. Why they did not?
I want readers to avoid any misunderstanding of my position. I support the birth of power-sharing talks right now. After the March 4 fiasco at GECOM, there is no other way for Guyana. But here is my incontrovertible point. Those who want power-sharing for one reason or the other failed to preserve its advocacy throughout the five year tenure of the APNU+AFC.
Nationalists like Kwayana and Bhagwan had to see the moral urgency in their praxis to call for some arrangement of either power-sharing or inclusive governance.
The post 2015 dispensation frowned on both of these directions. Five years passed and not a word from our two esteemed patriots on the disappointing use of power by APNU+AFC.
I am not positing that because Kwayana and Bhagwan let the five years pass without sustained arguments for power-sharing, one must view their recent advocacy with impatience. These two gentlemen are honest souls who have done far more for Guyana than a majority of us alive today. They are simply gigantic Guyanese.
I am wondering out aloud if their blueprint will be embraced by those who felt they were silent on power-sharing when the election results almost produced a tie.
I say in all honesty, those are questions that our two heroes must answer because we deserve to have those answers.
Finally, Nigel Westmaas wrote, he chose sides between the two adversaries. He opted for ANPU+AFC. How can you call for dissolution of ethnic tensions, race rivalry and power-sharing when you are on the side of one of the antagonists?
Did Nigel see the need for a third party presence in parliament that can tame power intoxication of the big two? I thank him for his candidness in stating his choice for a winner but knowing Nigel for over 42 years and the way his praxis evolved, my thinking is that he would have seen the shape of the post 2015 dispensation as a continuation of the old political culture and the traditional rivalry between the two big racial/ethnic leviathans.
I conclude not by asking but by being impertinent to demand of Eusi, Moses and Nigel to tell the Guyanese people what are their thoughts on the present physiology of the WPA that all three helped to birth in 1974.
They have remained reticent (except for Andaiye who gave me permission to quote that she wanted nothing to do with WPA politics after 2015), on the performance of a party that was in government since 2015 with immense controversies surrounding the deportment of many of the colleagues of Kwayana, Bhagwan and Westmaas who were part of the APNU+AFC regime.

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