Eusi Kwayana was a tragic revelation in my life

Mar 15, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News- Mr. Anil Nandlall, the Attorney General, gave a commonsensical rebuttal to those who accused the government of only targeting African employees of GECOM. He reasoned that if the staff is 99 percent African and there are wrong-doers there, then which employees from which other ethnic group will be under scrutiny?
His logic is compelling. It is absurd to argue against his reasoning. If the public is criticising traffic ranks’ behaviour on the roadways, then you can’t accuse the public of attacking policemen in general. Detectives and intelligence officers in the Force do not do road duties.
In the interview with me which formed the contents of yesterday’s column, I brought out some of the concerns about my activism that African Guyanese have voiced to my interviewer, Norman Brown. He told me he received the accusation that I target only African-Guyanese personalities for criticism. He said people have cited my criticism of Eusi Kwayana and UG Deputy Vice Chancellor, Dr. Mellissa Ifill.
Before I justify my condemnation of these two named individuals, here is a logical note. I can only reply to Portuguese Guyanese if they are the only section of Guyanese society that is selling false descriptions of the 2020 election. I could only reply to Chinese Guyanese if they are the only community in Guyana deceiving the world about the election results.
I have rebutted several false narratives of persons whose fictions about the 2020 election had to be confronted. It didn’t matter to me which race groups they were from. Mr. Brown referred to Kwayana as a respected politician. Indeed he is and his words carry weight, thus the need to correct him. Dr. Ifill is the Deputy Vice Chancellor of UG, an influential post. In the five months of election rigging, I never penned a rejectionist note on Hamilton Green’s defence of the PNC’s rigging because I think his words are not persuasive among the young generation.
Kwayana has been a tragic revelation to me. In an age where technology brings live action to every human in any part of the world, Kwayana’s attitude to the election rigging riveted my mind. If he had remained silent, then he could not have been condemned. This columnist has dozens of videos taken from inside the GECOM command centre that were transmitted to the world at the time those activities were taking place.
Mr. Kwayana insulted his age, iconic status, historical contribution, his nationalist record by replying to me to say he doesn’t have the facts to make a judgement on the rigging. But he went further than that. He continued to write on events taking place in Guyana expressing knowledge of what he knows while he continued to tell me he didn’t have the facts on what Claudette Singh, Clairmont Mingo, Roxanne Myers and Keith Lowenfield were doing. My deeply held belief about this man was that he had changed and was not the person I long admired and loved. I deeply regret what he has become. I always looked up to him. Not anymore.
I was compelled to rebut Dr. Ifill’s dismissal of the education and intelligence of two former CARICOM Prime Ministers – Jamaica’s Bruce Golding and Barbados’ Owen Arthur. Also one of the Caribbean’s leading intellectuals – UWI Vice Chancellor, Hilary Beckles. Also highly experienced diplomats from some of the top countries of the world. Also educated people from CARICOM, the OAS and the Commonwealth Secretariat.
Dr. Ifill described the attitude of the international observer groups to the election as shaped by the role that the Mercury organization laid out for the PPP. This was extremely insulting and as a Guyanese nationalist and a columnist who has an obligation to my readers, I felt it necessary to confront what I considered misleading exaggerations.
Was Dr. Ifill serious when she made that pronouncement? These highly educated folks just fell for the vocabulary and setting of Mercury? They didn’t see for themselves what was taking place in GECOM? I believe those videos were available to Kwayana and I say boldly that Dr. Ifill must have seen them. Remember when confusion was raining down on GECOM, the world was getting it live. The events were live-streamed. I was in the studio of Kaieteur Radio looking at live videos of what the people in the command centre were doing.
What Mercury had to do with that? The answer is absolutely nothing. Finally, do foreign PR firms influence how people vote? The answer is yes. But in the end citizens have the right to vote even if they do not know who or what they are voting for. The 2020 election was not about voting wrongly. It was about being prevented from having your vote counted.
(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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