Today, African Guyanese must do profound reflections

Aug 01, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – I have never been ethnically inclined. It is one of the instincts embedded in Homo sapiens that I missed out on. I don’t know if it has made me a better person but this I know – those who see themselves as an ethnic person first then a human after, are philosophically flawed in their thinking.
Though I have never been racially driven, I understood how a racial group feels at being targeted by others. I have been witness to every rigged election since 1968, except 1980, when I was in Canada studying.
I saw Indian people cry when the 1985 elections were stolen. They felt that Dr. Jagan and Indian people were being denied what history had given them. In this context, I understood how African people felt when their leaders lost the 2020 election. The fundamental difference between 1985 and 2020 is that the PPP did not lose and their leaders did not lie to them.
In 2020, the PNC lost and their leaders lied to them. Leaders will always lie to their followers. It is a negative value that will be with civilisation forever. But at some point in their lives, supporters have to reflect and accept reality. Trump lost the 2020 election because he promised to clear the swamp. Countless numbers saw that he was putting more mud in the swamp. He lost the votes of poor people in 2020, then in 2016, he promised to save them and he did not.
The parallel with the PNC in Guyana in 2020 is phenomenally identical. Trump said he was not a Washington insider and he will bring in new modes of politics that will bear no resemblance to the Washington outfits that ran the US for centuries. When he came to power, he acted no different.
The people of Guyana had 23 years of PPP rule. They saw the APNU+AFC merger as a new kid in town that they wanted to give a chance and the opportunity to govern. There was no Burnham, Hamilton Green, Robert Corbin. There was a new PNC guy and there were Trotman, Ramjattan and the romantic AFC.
Power came in 2015 and Black people were betrayed by every conceivable leader in the PNC. Every conceivable PNC leader showed they were no different from the PPP boys and girls whose relentless criticism during the 2011 and 2015 election campaigns swept the PNC to power.
Black people today will be celebrating the successful revolt against slavery but how emancipated are they today, in the words of Bob Marley? From Burnham to Granger, PNC leaders have been treating African Guyanese as if they are mentally lazy. Was there a Freudian slip when Amanza Walton-Desir identified the wrong object in her racial speech?
Burnham did not empower Black people. He empowered the state. When he died and Hoyte took over the vast resources the state possessed at the time, Hoyte sold them to wealthy Indians, rich Portuguese and foreign investors. Hoyte sold nothing to Black people. Hoyte offered nothing to Black people. Hoyte’s Economic Recovery Programme (ERP) negatively impacted public servants than any other sector. Hoyte’s ERP impoverished African Guyanese.
Every PNC leader in the post 2015 dispensation, including PNC sidekicks like Clive Thomas, deceived Black people. For five years street vendors were tossed around. Clive Thomas paid one of the richest Indian families in Guyana millions monthly in rent for a building to house his so-called anti-corruption outfit named SARA.
Homestretch Avenue was turned into a billion-dollar structure while schools where Black children attended had no toilet facilities. Black policemen, Black soldiers and Black public servants jumped so high for joy that they couldn’t come down back to the ground. The occasion was a commission into the public service where the retirement age was to be elevated to 60; it never happened. Black youths under the PNC still went to jail for possession of four grams of weed.
The PNC government lost the 2020 election because they spat on the generosity of the voters that gave them victory in 2015. The Deputy Vice Chancellor of UG, Dr. Ifill, wrote nonsense when she penned that the American PR firm, Mercury, decided the election result. The Stabroek News’ Black columnists composed asininity when they wrote that the international observers decided the election. ACDA showed ignorance when it proclaimed that the 2020 election was the occasion for the re-colonisation of Guyana. Since March last year, the PNC and WPA have been fooling Black people.
It is the right of African Guyanese to reject the rule of the PPP if they choose to. But their leaders did not perform and the PPP won a fair election. It is time African Guyanese open their eyes to save their future.
(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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