Complaints against Kit Nascimento

Sep 11, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – When it was advertised on social media that Kit Nascimento would be the guest on the Gildarie-Freddie Show, I received several emails advising me against having Nascimento.

The reasons given were not amusing and I was certainly not impressed. They all complained that Nascimento was associated with past PNC governments. I replied to each correspondence.

My content was the same in each submission. I asked that why must I alienate Nascimento because of his past behaviour decades ago and ignore his valuable contribution to the exposure of enemies of democracy in 21st century Guyana.

I enquired why Nascimento contextually must not be praised for those efforts in condemning rigged election that if succeeded would have brought back all the evil manifestations of the permanent Burnhamite state from 1968-1992.

I queried where were the voices that in 1968-1992 fought against bogus elections but were silent in 21st century Guyana when elections were being rigged again using methods that made Burnham look like a child in the elections he tampered with decades ago.

Those voices between 1968 to 1992 influenced my political perspective, my ideological orientations, my human rights philosophy. I became a permanent street protestor from 1968.

When fraudulent elections turned up in 2020, I looked over my shoulders and saw over 50 years of my life just wasted. Many of the voices I knew from 1968 fell silent. Some went beyond silence and supported what many shed blood over – the right to vote and have that vote counted.

Professor Clive Thomas who helped shape my philosophical radicalism was reticent. Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine told Neil Marks about thousands of irregularities in the election. His claim was APNU propaganda. Dr. Nigel Westmaas refused my plea to condemn the electoral criminalities. Moses Bhagwan curtly replied to my plea by writing: “We’ll see.” I didn’t see what he meant by “we’ll see.” Eusi Kwayana replied twice to me in April when the Draculean attempts to steal the election were being conveyed to the world by thousands of smart phone owners. Kwayana simply told me that he was too distant from the scene to comment.

The Guyana Human Rights Association that was active in the seventies and eighties had gone missing in March 2020. All these names I have cited above, I have memories and photograph of during our righteous confrontations against the indignities that the permanent rule of President Burnham brought to my country.

They were missing in action but not Kit Nascimento. He was there in the Ashmin Building denouncing barefaced and cruel attempts to steal an election and his voice was reverberating. He stood up in the Ashmin Building and got abused racially for safeguarding the right to vote.

Nascimento played his part in saving democracy in 21^st century Guyana. Those that I fought with to save rights and liberties in the 20th century in Guyana no longer had uses for democracy in their homeland in the 21st century. Democracy was saved in August 2020 when the legal winner of the election was sworn in. But the fight to save Guyana was not over.

The silent voices that were vocal in the 20th century had disappeared in September 2020 in Region Five. Aggrieved at attempts to resuscitate permanent power, the losers travelled to Cotton Tree and instigated violent men and women to beat and brutalise Indian people.

Kit Nacimento raised his hand in denunciation. The people who were my comrades in the 70s and 80s who raised their hands in anger at innocent people being attacked by goons from the House of Israel and the PNC long ago had now chosen to become invisible.

Kit Nascimento chose to be visible. His graphic portrait of how a 16-year-old girl and her aging grandmother were mauled by the marauding crowds remains the most moving account of the days of mayhem in September 2022. Not even one just meaningless word was devoted to the plight of that girl from civil society, the usual suspects and others. Please see my column of Wednesday, April 27, 2022, titled, “Read Kit Nascimento’s KN letter yesterday. You must. You have to.”

In that column, I once asked that young girl who is now 18 years to get in touch with me. My cell is 614-5927. My address is 47 Area Q, Turkeyen, Georgetown. My email address is [email protected]. I would like her to email her image so Leonard Gildarie and I can post it up at the beginning of our show.

It was Kit Nascimento that first brought to our attention what that teenager and her grandmother went through. That teen’s description of her ordeal can be obtained on the internet from the Stabroek News of September 22, 2020. I’m glad I interviewed Mr. Nascimento. I would willingly have him back again.

(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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