The APNU+AFC losing the battle because of their insults

May 25, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

In one of my columns (Saturday, May 16, 2020, “Someone has to advise APNU+AFC leadership not to talk”), I opined that APNU+AFC leaders should just shut up and hope that their surrogates in GECOM’s leadership continue to rig the election for them. Each time any APNU+AFC personality talk, (top leaders and second tier figures) what comes out is illogical, comical, irrational, deceptive, insulting, and utterly disgraceful.
It is not stopping, and the world is watching and laughing. It is not only the party personnel but their intellectual supporters. It will take several columns to do an enumeration of these things. They are literally mountainous since March 4 when Mingo became Mandrake. Much to Mingo’s credit, he has gone totally silent. Good for him but APNU+AFC bosses continue to self-destruct.
One of the consistent threads in the defense of rigged elections by the APNU+AFC and their surrogates is the insulting shape of their output. A week ago I referred to a Facebook post in which one of Guyana’s leading academics opined that the international observers fell for the sermon scripted by the Mercury consultancy firm that the PPP had employed before the election.
This lady cannot see she is insulting dozens of highly educated people, far more educated than she is. The international observers included one of Barbados’s longest serving Prime Ministers and a master politician of Jamaica – Bruce Golding. Golding left the JLP and formed his own party. The JLP lost the election at that time. It brought back Golding, who won the subsequent contest and became the Prime Minister.
All of these people were taken in by some group in the US that came to Guyana and successfully manipulated our thinking, except the lady who did the Facebook posting. These Mercury people have to be geniuses. The real fact is that these American PR firms do not know much about Third World politics and their cultures. Here is more insult. On a radio programme, a well known propagandist for APNU+AFC in the US publicly stated that when the former Barbadian PM, Owen Arthur, came here to head the Commonwealth Observer mission, he stayed at Jagdeo’s residence. Really? Arthur is so stupid to have done that? The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is that Arthur stayed at the Marriott Hotel.
From designating the observers from Europe, Canada and the US as re-colonizers (as ACDA did) and white imperialist, the defenders of rigged elections are now attacking Black people who have condemned the electoral tampering. Golding and Arthur are now in their sight. Here are two more examples of self-destruction.
On that radio programme, the gentleman said that when Mia Mottley observed that there are forces that do not want the recount she meant both sides – the PPP and APNU+AFC. This is not only insulting to Mottley but is an expression of gargantuan stupidity. The CARICOM supervised recount was stopped by a court writ filed by an APNU member and the attorneys that argued her case were APNU lawyers including an election candidate. No opposition group supported the stopping of the CARICOM supervised recount.
Finally, here is what one of Guyana’s most prominent diaspora supporter of APNU told me Thursday night. There will be no sanctions against Guyana should the Granger government remain in power because the congressional Black caucus in the US will not allow it. Here is my take on how they will stop it.
These Black legislators will contact the State Department and demand that the sanctions be scrapped because this is tantamount to hurting a Black Government. Why is this insulting to the American legislators? Because my diaspora friend thinks they are stupid. They cannot see further than racial thinking, so they support a Black government in Guyana that rigs election.
Is this how that gentleman thinks of these Black American legislators? But there is more to come. He said that the US administration will listen to the Black caucus because an election is around the corner and the Black vote is important. I was livid but I managed to keep my voice down, something I am incapable of. First, Blacks do not vote in any significant numbers for the Republican Party, so why this gentleman thinks because of sanctions against Guyana, the GOP will lose Black votes? Secondly, most of the constituencies in the districts where the Black caucus have their support do not know where Guyana is, except in certain parts of New York. There are Black voters in Southern US who elect Black congressmen who never heard of Guyana. I guess the insults will go on.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

---

---