The WPA’s great evaders have found their voice

Apr 12, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News- I am not on Facebook so I miss a colossal amount of information about what effective opinion-makers say that could penetrate and damage the minds of innocent humans, innocent people who need to be given the facts that history has recorded.
From time to time people send me screenshots of Facebook postings of what they believe are emanations I ought to reflect on. It was through that route I became acquainted with the feelings of Dr. Mellissa Ifill on the March 2020 elections. I was shocked. It led to a few columns criticising Dr. Ifill. Last week, I received the posting of what David Hinds wrote on his page on the 96th birthday of Eusi Kwayana and I responded. See my last Saturday column, “Kwayana at 96: The Runner Stumbles.”
I have been informed that on Kwayana achieving 96, some WPA stalwarts have offered their assessment of Kwayana’s legacy, three of whom have not written not one line on the following: the unconstitutional evasion by the APNU+AFC of the no-confidence vote (NCV) which lasted one year – the entire year of 2019; the most barefaced tampering of a national election in the history of election rigging under President Burnham and Desmond Hoyte, including the fraudulent 1978 referendum; the five years of WPA in government 2015 – 2020 in which the WPA subordinated itself to the unhistorical banality of the PNC and advanced no agenda for social change.
The three persons are: Dr. Nigel Westmaas, Moses Bhagwan and Dr. Clive Thomas. Just one small diversion before we discuss the avoidance mentality of the three gentlemen. It is important because it indicates the horrible transformation of the political party of the WPA that Walter Rodney publicised to the world in the second half of the 1970s.
GECOM’s PNC Commissioner, Desmond Trotman, while part of the GECOM conspiracy in the March election, in a whole page letter in the newspapers of June 24, 2020, ended his missive with the exclamation, “Walter Rodney Lives.” I am not a fearful person; have never been. But when I read the use of that exclamation which is dear to those who love Rodney, I got goose bumps. Not one person who loved Rodney called upon Trotman to desist in vulgarising the name of the Guyanese hero.
So Westmaas, Bhagwan and Thomas have eventually found their voice which has been silent since December 21, 2018 when the NCV was passed in Parliament right through to April 2021. Now I heard that they mustered the courage to make a political statement in praise of a man who has deceived Guyana through the dormancy of his racial instinct for over 70 years.
When the election rigging began, I wrote Westmaas reminding him we were going back to the tragic era of Burnham and he must add his voice. Here are his exact words, “I guess my thoughts would be lost in the developing story.” That was his cop out. He had no intention of publicly denouncing rigged election after fighting against it since the 1970s. Since March 4, 2020, he has maintained his silence.
When Desmond Trotman wrote his infamous epistle of June 24 and justified his betrayal of Walter Rodney, he cited Bhagwan and Westmaas as WPA members who would stand by what he is doing as a PNC GECOM Commissioner. I wrote both to inform them of Trotman’s treachery and asked Bhagwan to respond. Here is Bhagwan’s response, “I will give it some thought.” He never did. Here is how Westmaas replied, “Hi Freddie, acknowledging your email.”
Bhagwan and Westmaas had no intention of responding to the epistemological miasma of Trotman because all three had the same perception of how things should unfold – rigging is alright because APNU is better than the PPP and why? Because the WPA will still be part of the government if the APNU remains in office.
This is what people like Bhagwan and Westmaas had become. Deep in the prison walls of their mind was the imprint of hatred for the PPP. Their logic was simple to understand. It went like this and it is still like this – “at all cost we don’t want the PPP back even if Guyana has to suffer as a country.” But their thinking is easy to understand. Both men have long gone from Guyana and will never return.
Finally, Clive Thomas. He spoke at the symposium on Kwayana at 96. But since the NCV in 2018, he too has lost his pen and voice. Not a word on the WPA’s role in government. Not a word on either praise or criticism of the WPA’s final realisation of power in 2015 which of course turned out to be a horror show.
(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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