We need President Biden’s DGB in Guyana

Jul 03, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – I’ve learnt a lot being with my dog daily on the seawall and the National Park. And when I say a lot, I mean an enormous amount. I could never be racially driven and don’t care to have any involvement with any cultural club though I believe ethnic groups have a natural, inherent urge to protect, preserve and promulgate their heritage.

I would gladly support financially an event sponsored by an Indian, African or Chinese group in Guyana. But it begins and ends there. That is who I am. I have seen how deeply caring are people for each other in this country and it cuts across ethnicity.

My wife and I got stalled with a dead battery on the middle of busy Camp Street between Lamaha and New Market streets. A mini-bus pulled up, the driver was African Guyanese. He parked awkwardly so I could have gotten a jump start. I saw a few African men trying to bully an Indian woman caught in an accident in which the motorcyclist was in the wrong.

They began to bully the woman and I intervened and they got aggressive with me and were getting racial in their vocabulary. Luckily, up the road, I saw a police vehicle crossing the street not far from us. I drove quickly and summoned them. I will always remember the words of the African rank when he heard what was being said when he came out of the car. This is what he yelled out: “I ain waan hear who is coolie maan, who is black maan, I wan know who wrong and who right.” With those words, everyone went quiet.

The average person in this country is honest and not mean-spirited and it is racist advocates and media recklessness that have been polluting the flower beds of Guyana. What is uglier are those who assume an innocent, independent stance yet take partisan position that are uglier than the politicians that fight each other across the racial divide.

Given the toxic terrain Guyana lives on, I have always maintained that each output of nasty lie, infected fiction must be responded to because when you do that you save an innocent mind. I have most of the times, in my own little way, confronted colossal lies and gargantuan fictions and though I may not know of the specific situation in which many minds were saved from being polluted, I believe they have.

President Biden has enacted a mechanism that needs to be started up in Guyana. It is named Disinformation Governance Board (DGB). Its purpose is to reply to fetid disinformation that right-wing, racist sections of the US are feeding the American people on a daily basis. In Guyana, this is long overdue after the March 2020 election debacle.

We have in this country, really horrible attempts to pass on horrendous lies by people with an evil agenda and there should be a DGB to save young minds from this miasma. A member of the lunatic fringe said on social media that the PPP ministers have stolen billions of American dollars since they came into power. Could opposition supporters buy this putridity? Maybe some can say that is why you need a DGB.

David Hinds made a comment on me in the online publication of Buxton named Village Voice. He referred to me as an Indianist who wants to keep the PPP in power. Should I reply to that? Yes, obviously because people could be better informed. I voted for an Amerindian party in the last election, while Hinds voted for a predominantly African party, APNU + AFC, which he belonged to at the time.

Hinds is the founder leader of two African organisations – Cuffy 250 and Society for the Empowerment of African Guyanese. I, on the other, have never had membership in any Indian organisation. So why am I an Indianist? The reasoning of people like Hinds and others are simple to understand and we must write on it.

I believe and stated that the PPP won a free election in 2020 and is the rightful occupier of power. Secondly, the Ali presidency is an elected one whose nature I see as no different in essence from other democratic countries around the world.

I do not see Dr. Ali as autocratic and authoritarian. Until he departs from that direction, he has my support. I make no apologies for that and that observation is especially directed to those who crave honour and respect in being anti-government. I have no class and racial agenda that pits me against the Government of Guyana.

Those who do not like the government because of race and class have a right to be oppositional but they have no right to maliciously yell out “fire, fire” in a crowded cinema.

(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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