African Guyanese deserve intellectual honesty from their leaders

Aug 24, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

Kaieteur News – The most potent analogy I can think of on the PNC’s recent electoral loss is a dishonest coach in test cricket. If the team’s bowlers and batsmen lack technical competence, the only way they can acquire those necessities is by the coach telling them where they went wrong in losing the test series. If because of his ego he lays the blame on umpire bias and faulty video review then continued defeat will occur.
Over the years, I have penned several analyses of the published letters of UG lecturer, Sherwood Lowe, in all of which, I have condemned his shameless endorsement of partisan politics that rest on the fulcrum of support for the PNC and ethnic bias.
In fairness to Mr. Lowe, he has an interesting piece in the newspapers recently in which he has turned himself into the third voice in the African community in the Caribbean; the other two being UG lecturer, Charlene Wilkinson, and UWI Vice Chancellor, Professor Hilary Beckles. I don’t know why Mr. Lowe has chosen this pathway but as an academic, I have to provide answers when asked. My belief is that in each human there is a limit to which one is not prepared to sell their dignity to others who are too deceitful and immoral.
Mr. Lowe, writes, “The coalition must confront the reality that a majority of its supporters have accepted, at various stages since March 2020 that it lost the last election properly. Should the coalition leaders therefore admit electoral defeat, expect no great drama and trauma among party supporters. The claims of “cheated not defeated” have long worn thin. Most supporters now see it as only political posturing rather than a sincere assertion.”
We must not expect any quick recognition of reality because the PNC and AFC leaders have boxed themselves in from which saving face is not an easy option. The people who should join Mr. Lowe (and Ms. Wilkinson and Professor Beckles) are those intellectuals, middle class folk, and other educated people from the African Guyanese world to explain to African people throughout the world why the electoral defeat came about.
As a public intellectual over the long years, I know the ordinary folks yearn for answers to macro-political issues. African people must be educated into the loss of the election by the PNC in 2020, an election, which they honestly thought would have seen the return to power of Mr. Granger. Mr. Lowe did not enumerate his variables but he and others should.
African Guyanese have at their disposal, since March 2020, many analyses of the poor performance of the APNU+AFC in office when political observers began to write about the defeat of the PNC and AFC. But one suspects they want that assessment and critique from folks in the Black community.
It is becoming sickening to see criticism of the government, Freddie Kissoon, Vishnu Bisram and the media by these Black voices but not a word of reflection as to why the APNU+AFC was defeated. These Black voices have a moral obligation to PNC voters to explain why it went wrong during the five years when their leaders were in office.
I believe Mr. Lowe has opened the door to this long overdue obligation. His words are pellucid – “a majority of PNC voters believed their leaders properly lost.” The next step is the explanation and analysis. The young people in the PNC will take over the party in the next 10 years given the age of Guyana’s population. They are entitled to a fair and dispassionate thesis on where their leaders went wrong that led to the ouster from office in March 2020.
The contributory factors are countless. I have covered much ground since March 2020 but still there is more ground to traverse as to why the voters turned away from APNU+AFC. The analysis must be holistic. It must not center on the personality of Granger alone. His massive shortcomings did contribute to the results on March 3 but the entire fortress was fetid.
I end with an idea that I have toyed with but have not done an entire column on. It is possible from day one, both the PNC and AFC (the AFC has a deadly man in its hierarchy that is far more violent and dangerous than any PNC leader, past and present, except Hamilton Green) decided that they don’t have to be good guys in the government and to please African people or sugar workers or the business world. They will not lose power for decades to come because rigging will guarantee permanent power. Then the riggers became clowns and idiots because they didn’t have a Forbes Burnham to show them how to make rigging invisible.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

---

---