The fault dear Brutus: Leonard Craig’s obligation  

Nov 19, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – I maintain friendship with people that do not share the same political perspectives with me.  It has been that way for a long time. I will only break that relationship over threats to the social being of my country.

I cannot maintain any form of camaraderie when friends of mine seek to undermine the future of thousands of innocent people. I broke my friendship forever with some names in the WPA and AFC because they wanted to destroy Guyana after March 2020.

Leonard Craig was a student of mine and someone I think is fundamentally a decent person. He held considerable authority in the AFC. He was part of the executive body, management committee, and the renegotiating team for the Cummingsburg Accord and deputy General-Secretary.

While I was critical from day one of the AFC in power from 2015-2020, several AFC personalities that I knew very long before the birth of the AFC remained on good terms with me. They were (are) decent humans so they never showed vexation at my critiques of the AFC’s betrayal of the Guyanese people. Craig was one of them.

We had him as the guest on the Gildarie-Freddie Kissoon Show and though I thought he should have been more forthcoming, he did admit that skulduggery went on with the March 2020 election.

I do not have a Facebook account thus did not know that Craig posted a very important statement. It was when we had attorney Ronald Burch -Smith on the show that I learnt of Craig’s profound statement on politics.

I have seen the polemic that Craig has put out and welcome his break with the AFC and his admission that the AFC deceived him on the election results. But there is a serious philosophical flaw in the conceptualizations of Craig that need contesting.

I will quote from the Facebook post then offer my rejection. He wrote: “While I was part of the AFC, I was 100% in. Now that I am out, I cannot, reveal anything publicly about the inner workings of the AFC while I was there. For all of its triumphs and failures, I share its kudos and blame. Consequently, don’t expect me to criticize the AFC (or any of its leaders) publicly for anything it did or didn’t do while I was an activist. I accept collective political responsibility even when I wasn’t in agreement with some individual decisions. The brand of politics we practice in Guyana, minority opinions and dissenting views are kept inside the party.”

The last two lines are not true and have never existed in Guyana. When politicians break from their parties in Guyana from the 1950s onwards, they offer the nation their reasons and they justify their public criticism through what they see as an obligation to record history.

For Craig to pen those words quoted above, means that he is not practicing moral obligation and not recording history. When we speak up, history is recorded. For example, Miss Barbados said that the 2000 Miss World contest was rigged in favour of the Indian competitor, Priyanka Chopra because an Indian company financed the event and rules were bent to favour Chopra.

If we stay quiet on many important events, history becomes poorer. I will do a separate column on fantastic revelations by Jerry Gouveia last Wednesday on the Gildarie-Freddie Kissoon Show on the dying stages of the election rigging of the 2020 election.

Mr. Gouveia revealed some positive traits about David Granger in the election fiasco and  spoke of the types of sanctions the White House were going to put on the leadership of the PNC, AFC and others that were never made public before. In revealing these details, Mr. Gouveia has fulfilled his obligation to his country.

There can be no plausible theory by Craig that he cannot reveal what wrongs, depravities, immoralities, indecencies, etc the AFC did during its years in power. His contention in that Facebook post is that he cannot make the revelations because he was part of the leadership that made decision thus he has a moral obligation.

But what about the moral obligation to guide future leaders in politics so they can prepare themselves for the ugly, evil things that are likely to emerge and they have Craig’s truths and facts to guide them?

Craig needs to tell those people who voted for the AFC the wrong things the AFC did that other parties must avoid. That is called moral obligation. I hope Craig sees the fallacy in his approach and level with the Guyanese people. It will make him a better human and make history richer.

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

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