David Granger: The ID kills the EGO and craves basic instincts

Sep 12, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I am saying it again – the election crisis has been a priceless gem for the historian. So many times I have repeated that comment. If we didn’t have the five months saga, we would never have seen how certain Freudian minds educated in the fine arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, art of poetry, returned to what Sigmund Freud so beautifully described in his research.
The raw, untamed, uncivilized instincts defied the crusading, mollifying effects of the EGO and ran wildly to the point where the human entered its pre-civilized state. The possession of education failed to imprison the ID and Guyana almost died. The names are unbelievable. Who would have thought that after seventy years, Eusi Kwayana would have returned to Sydney King? David Hinds’ pulpit reminded me of the Rwandan tragedy.
Barrington Braithwaite writing in the Chronicle under the title, “Talking Culture” was defending violently rigged election and was billions of miles away from anything to do with culture. Who would have taught, some of the aristocrats from middle class society would run down the road shouting, “we ain’t coming out of government.”
The election was saved by the international society then the Freudian mind tossed aside the EGO, sought comfort in the ID, and a double murder in the backdams of Region 5 allowed the ID to go on a violent journey of bestial instincts. At this point no one knows who killed the two cousins. The theories are cascading like fountain water, the most popular of which was gang culture. But there are politicians who believe if they do not have power, then Guyana must not survive.
People like David Granger, Joe Harmon, Sherod Duncan of the AFC saw the Region 5 double homicide as an opportunity to return to March 4 when Clairmont Mingo took Guyana back to Belfield where Forbes Burnham plotted every rigged election after 1973.
The story of David Granger is the story of the 1960s which ended in 1964 when the Americans intervened to remove Cheddi Jagan as Premier. Granger was new to politics in 2010. I will always quote Clarissa Riehl when I analyze the sudden entry of Granger into the PNC’s hierarchy. She told me at the South Road entrance of the High Court that she never heard about him in the PNC.
Granger of course contradicted that. Speaking to a PNC diaspora gathering in the US, he told his audience he has always been a PNCite. He cited decades of support for the PNC. Riehl was right and wrong. She didn’t know him around the PNC so she was right. But she was wrong because she confused the ideological with the physical. Granger was very much a PNC when his hero Forbes Burnham was rigging national elections. As a top army leader under Burnham’s presidency, he looked up to Burnham as a god. The question remains – did he know about the plot to kill Walter Rodney?
If you were a PNCite in the sixties and you became president sixty years after, then the sixties would take its rightful Freudian place in your mind. It was no accident, that when he became president, he devoted his private home to house four foundations in Burnham’s name. Granger has always been an ardent fan of Hamilton Green. So he rewound the tape to sixty years ago to pay homage to Green. He requested the Hamilton Green Pension Bill. His party passed it in the House. It gave Green a whopping pension retroactive to his first day as prime minister in 1985.
I remember as president before he moved out of his private house in D’Urban Backlands, he gave an interview with the Chronicle which published his matutinal habits. He said each morning he would listen to Bach and Chopin. So the guy that went up to Region 5 to do what he saw his heroes doing in the sixties, actually listens to classical music. This is where Granger and I have something in common. I do happen to like classical music. But I believe my love for classical music and my education at three universities have left indelible insignias on my mind, heart and soul.
Those insignias prevent me from egging on people to do racial things. My education has taught me that the only race worth criticizing is the human race because the Homo sapiens creature is a flawed thing. My education taught me to stay away from the ignorance of race incitement, race consciousness and race hate. In Region 5, preaching hate for narrow power gains should not be made to succeed. But then again if Beethoven and education can’t civilize us, then we are doomed.

(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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