African power in Guyana: A Reply to David Hinds

Jun 09, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Dr. David Hinds, in a letter on me, once wrote; “But he (Freddie) is not entitled to create his context and fit other people neatly into them.” In reply to that statement (see my column of Thursday, May 14, 2020, “International and local observers: Not some but all.”), I wrote; But this very crime he accuses others of, he is perpetuating on the Guyanese people. David Hinds has introduced an ocean of irrelevant contexts to justify a process of electoral fraud. When you speak about fraud, he said election is not the issue.”
In his last Sunday KN column, irrelevant or non-existent contexts are again raised. And the continuous thread running through his columns since the March 2 election is that the March 2 election is irrelevant to Guyanese especially African Guyanese.
Anyone reading that commentary of his last Sunday could not have missed the subtle context of inserting the bestiality of racist determinism African-American continue to suffer and highlighting analogies to Guyana. I hope African-Americans read the comparison and advise him not to do so again because it is insulting. The exceptional racism of the American landscape against African dwellers has no modern parallel. I suggest David read an analysis by a great columnist, Black British sociologist, Gary Younge, in the current issue of the New York Review of Books.
Black Americans do not have any form of power in the US. Even in sports, the franchises are owned by white billionaires. The Whiteman has had his knee on Black America since slavery was introduced into the US. The analogy with Guyana is patently absurd. Anyone from another planet reading David’s Sunday column would think that strands of similarities between the experiences of African people in Guyana and the US exist.
I do not share the same sociological adumbration about Guyana as Ravi Dev, but much to his credit, he has kept the paradigm of the ethnic security dilemma alive in an understanding of power distribution in Guyana.
The two tragedies have different derivatives. African Guyanese do not have economic power AT ALL (deliberate emphasis of “at all”). In fact, about five Portuguese families have more land holdings than the entire land-owning Afro-Guyanese stratum. There is a lacunae buried deep in the psyche of African Guyanese that until this ethnic security dilemma of economic barrenness is extirpated, Africans will never accept that Guyana is fair to them.
Indians feel that the state in Guyana has historically been anti- Indian. There is a prism buried deep in the psyche of Indians that once Africans control the totality of state activities, Indians will be treated as second class citizens and will have to accept that fate.
In the psyche of the Indian PPP, African Guyanese will use state power to weaken the PPP in government. The examples the PPP offers should not be dismissed easily – rigged polls in 1968, 73, 78, 80, 85 and post election violence in 1992, 1997, 2001 and the Buxton troubles.
If you accept this theoretical formulation then both Indians and Africans have power but different types of power. David’s contestation that there is a knee on African Guyanese neck is rhetorical bravado that has no place in polemics on Guyana. African leadership in this land accepts the deterministic perspective that unless state power is captured then the ethnic/economic dilemma of Black people in Guyana will never wither away.
It was Nigel Hughes who superbly remarked in March that the PNC made a fatal mistake in relying on elections instead of constitutional reform. Here is where the PNC has lost the support and admiration of the world. You relied on electoral power in 2015 and you succeeded. That became your end game. In 2020, you again put your fate in elections. When you lose, you shout that Black people are facing disaster in a game of zero-sum ethnic battle.
David Hinds and countless others like him were part of the 2015 capture of the state through elections. They agreed that elections were the way to go. David himself became a candidate. Elections were held. The PNC lost. Now all of a sudden the role of elections is no longer the solution but constitutional reconstruction to stop the erosion of African well-being.
This is a game that the world does not intend to play with the PNC and its intellectual defenders like David. For the world, the PNC was happy to rely on elections to continue its hold on power. When it lost what it agreed to participate in, it now sees that game as no longer having relevant. People have a right to vote. No form of power-sharing should deny that. The PNC and David are doing that right now.

(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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