We must directly address African Guyanese about their deceitful leaders

Jul 09, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – It has to be a joke of immense hilarity for an African Guyanese to tell an Indian academic that he cannot speak for African Guyanese when that leader is a fraud trying to fool African Guyanese.
It has been written in the daily newspapers in the past year by several prominent African figures that I cannot speak for African Guyanese. In addition to them, I have been informed that there are many more such statements on social media. I don’t know why these people think I want to speak for any ethnic community in this or any other country.
I straddle three worlds – I am an academic; I have over 50 years of praxis and 32 years as a media practitioner. This background enables me to analyse things, people, places and events in my country for which I have no other document other than a national ID and Guyanese passport.
I will not be deterred by ethnic groups telling me I cannot assess their culture, religion and politics. What I can elongate on is fraudulent, manipulative, deceitful leadership in any cultural, religious or ethnic community. In Guyana, African Guyanese are being fooled mercilessly by pretenders who have no love in their hearts for seeing a productive future for African Guyanese constituencies.
The heartless manipulation must be exposed because it goes on relentlessly. I had to appear in court to argue for bail for a Black youth charged with two grams of ganja because his friends contacted James Bond who told them what his fees were. For more on this see my column of Tuesday January 8, 2019, “African Guyanese 52 years after Independence.”
Does James Bond speak for Black people? Does James Bond have more of an interest in seeing a future for African youths than an Indian like me? What do you in the Black communities in Guyana think? African Guyanese leaders fooled African youths in 2015 when WPA and PNC leaders promised them if they come to power, they will change the law relating to the possession and sentencing for marijuana.
They spent five years in office and actually refused to pass the legislation in the name of parliamentarian Michael Carrington. It was Carrington who told the media that President Granger did not want the Bill. More importantly to note, no African political leader in the WPA, PNC and AFC ever offered an explanation much less an apology.
But guess what. When they became the opposition last year, they tabled a Bill to change the very law that they refused to scrap when they were in power. Are these the African Guyanese leaders Black Guyana wants? Did any member of the Rastafarian community actually vote in 2020 for the PNC, WPA and AFC to return to power? I cannot believe they did. No human can be so masochistic.
There isn’t a day that goes by in this politically unsettling land that African political leaders opposed to the PPP haven’t uttered a cruel deception that misleads Black Guyana. Harmon took the Sputnik vaccine then condemned it. The effect could be disastrous for African people who put their faith in their leaders. Simply put – they could listen to Harmon and avoid the vaccine. How could Black people in this country listen to what Harmon said and put their fate in him?
Take the WPA. They have been pimping Walter Rodney’s name for years in ways that are so depraved that they should be ostracised by every citizen in this land. They are currently accusing the PPP government of seeking to acquire political capital over the official recognition of Rodney’s legacy. But it was the man’s family that asked for his achievements to be recognised as part of Guyana’s history.
The family did not ask David Granger or Clive Thomas or Tabitha Sarabo-Halley, three African Guyanese who were policy-makers in the government 2015 – 2020. Founder of a paper political party, Sarabo-Halley has joined the chorus of denouncing the PPP government for doing what she should have tried to get her APNU+AFC government to do.
These very Black leaders are completely silent on the Donald Rodney travesty. It was a PPP administration that is less than a year in power that facilitated a Court of Appeal hearing to remove the stain of a fraudulent criminal conviction against Walter Rodney’s brother, Donald.
What is sickening and immorally terrifying is that in telling Black people that the PPP is getting publicity from Rodney’s name, they are so contemptuous of Black Guyana that they refuse to offer African Guyanese an explanation of why they didn’t do what the PPP has rightfully done.
(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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