PNC Election Results, Part 3: Decency of African Guyanese

Dec 29, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – We are too divided in this country to see how fundamentally decent humans are. During the months while “mo fyaah/slo fyaah” was taking place, my daughter was taking Common Entrance lessons at West Ruimveldt from the famous schoolteacher, Wilfred Success.
This happened for one year and no remark was thrown at me, ever, when for one, long year, I sat in my car and waited for her. Black people from South Georgetown passed and looked at me all the time. What is happening in this country is that questionable Black leaders are arrogating to themselves the role of guidance agents for African Guyanese. No one in the African community in Guyana would vote for these usual suspects for any position. Yes, they listen to their Meta programme but it begins and ends there.
Black people do not think that Mark Benschop, David Hinds, Sherod Duncan, Simona Broomes, etc. are their leaders. Many Black voices like these speak in the name of Black people; tell the nation that they are the guidance agents for the African population when they are not. Did you see David Hinds with a bullhorn exhorting Black villages up the East Coast to undermine the government? The villagers just passed and watched at him as if he was a lunatic.
Here is what they do to fool African Guyanese. When a Portuguese or Indian or mixed race person denounces a PNC leader or one of the PNC’s surrogates, the reply is predictable – “what you know about Black people you are not Black, don’t speak for Black people.” But they can’t speak for Black people either.
After this long digression, let’s get to the point. Amanza Walton Desir (AWD) during the past year was supposed to be the face of the PNC. Khemraj Ramjattan said she is the type of politician the world needs. She got mauled in the voting. It was a cruel lynching with her unknown opponent securing almost double her votes.
Christopher Jones received a high profile during the election drama in 2020 by attacking the observer missions along with Sherod Duncan on their Meta programme. Jones took a beating. Two aggressive women in the PNC leadership – Simona Broomes and Annette Ferguson had poor showings.
The names of Vanessa Kissoon and Sharma Solomon were supposed to be big motifs in the PNC. Guyana was serenaded with the music that these were future leaders of African Guyanese. That was a mirage. The paucity of votes they got has consigned them to the department of political footnotes. Kissoon and Solomon were personalities in the enclave of Linden. Guyana is a large country with just under 800,000 souls, a majority of which do not know Kissoon and Solomon.
So what conclusions can the analyst arrive at with the decapitation of these high profile figures? In another part in this series, I will outline why Harmon was defeated. He lost for the same reasons that the personalities named above lost only that there were more pressing factors in the devastation done to Harmon.
The names above were torn down for one fundamental reason. People thought they were the faces of five months of lying to the nation. So did Norton but I will come to explain why he won. In fact, Norton didn’t win the PNC’s leadership. It was a case of Harmon losing.
The result of the PNC’s congressional voting showed that certain high profile figures in the PNC became the victims of the Freudian minds of the delegates. PNC delegates locked away in the inner recesses of their minds the suspicion they had of these large symbols of PNC resistance.
Since March, it has been 21 months of people like Walton-Desir and Ferguson banging away at African Guyanese about rigged elections which Guyanese knew the PNC didn’t win. It was a PNC sympathiser, Sherwood Lowe who wrote recently that Black people know the PNC did not win. Delegates were fed up with 21 months of lying and it caught up with PNC men and women whom the delegates feel should be demoted.
There were additional factors in the political execution of AWD and Jones. But first Ferguson. She was in the news recently with her libel writ against Mr. Jagdeo but that didn’t help her. Delegates still voted against her. Jones suffered because of Duncan. His name is linked with the extreme antics and comical display of Duncan.
AWD was seen by delegates as an extremist who is not good for multi-racial politics. This is where the decency of African Guyanese came in. If she had apologised for her wild vocabulary, maybe she would have received more votes.
(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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