When demented minds turned a drug-related murder into political savageness

Jan 16, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – I repeat the following words that I wrote in my column, “Afro-Guyanese in 2020: Bonfires of deceit,” of Tuesday, January 5, 2020, “The greatest irony in philosophy is that something that is wrong can also be logical.”
Trump in the US, PNC and AFC leaders in Guyana were wrong to incite people. But, there is an objective logic that exists in reality that makes you understand why they did it even though when you understand the logic you will pronounce on what they did as wrong.
Power-holders like Trump, Granger, etc., do not want to lose power. Situations where power can be retained will be shaped and twisted to fit the cravings of the people who want to retain power at all cost. It was clear to any honest mind that it was extremely stupid for Indian people to murder two African youths in wild triumphalism after Dr. Ali became president. Their party won. There is no vexation. Why then kill your detractors rather than celebrate the victory?
The PNC, the AFC and their racist surrogates put a political twist to the homicides of the two Henry cousins for the purpose of creating national mayhem so it can generate international pressure for power sharing. That was wrong, indefensible, immoral, ugly and uncivilized but it was logical in the context of realpolitik. Leaders create wars so as to birth domestic confusion to stay in power. Trump may even start a war with Iran to divert attention from his current problems.
What was both wrong and illogical is how certain civil society organizations fed the immorality of the PNC and AFC by strengthening the dangerous, evil and violent racist demagoguery over the murder of the Henry cousins. Here is what I wrote about the murders in a column titled “Claudette Singh: The 2020 election and the Region Five mayhem” as early as Sunday, September 13, 2020 – “Was it a random murder that the PNC zeroed in on to create a race war to ensure it has a place at the post-violence settlement? Some theories making the rounds are that it could have been unmitigated vengeance by drug people who the cousins had a falling out with. Another theory is that it was an invention by political opportunists in the leadership of the PNC and AFC as the beginning of a protracted war of “mo fyaah, slo fyaah.”
The strongest theory making the rounds in September last year, was that the Henry boys were killed in a drug war. The area was a haven of marijuana cultivations, which the police had raided and burnt some farms weeks before the Henry cousins got killed.
Yet from September until this very month, the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA), civil society groups like those hypocritical women organizations kept the violent and inciting vocabulary going about the race factor in the murder. It is as if they wanted that to be the answer so it can fit into their anti-PPP agenda.
You can hate the PPP if you want. You can knock your head on a wall in disgust that the PPP won the March election but the PPP is not Guyana. Your country is bigger than the PPP. The rigging of the election was not about the PPP. It was about saving Guyana. Looking objectively about the Henry murders was not about the PPP. It was about saving Guyana from ethnic implosion.
My problem in this country is how groups and individuals whose narrative can lead to the disintegration of Guyana are allowed to be accepted in the mainstream of society, when their actions are so harmful. The GHRA became a surrogate for the PNC and AFC in shaping the conversation about the Henry murders having an ethnic motive.
A mainstream newspaper was providing huge space among its pages devoted to what this organization was inciting in relation to the Henry murders. How do you explain this sociological and journalistic aberration in a modern society, especially in the light of how wild speeches in the US were undermining American democracy?
Many innocent Indians were badly beaten and robbed because these civil society organizations sponsored the violent, racist rhetoric of David Granger and Joe Harmon when, both men went to Region Five in September last year and incited their constituencies to create physical harm on innocent Guyanese. Kit Nascimento highlighted what happened to a 16-year-old girl and her grandmother (see my column of Monday, September 21, 2020, “Helpless 16 year old girl, her grandmother and three LGBT victims.”) The GHRA, these hypocritical women groups, and others are enemies of democracy. Young Guyanese should hold them accountable. But this will never happen because this is stupid Guyana.

(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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