Is there a rebirth of Creole power?

Jan 10, 2023 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – I interrupted my series of analyzing the contents of 2022 by devoting my January 5 column to replying to a vicious and subtle racist condemnation of Charrandass Persaud by the Stabroek News (SN) published on January 4.

Since my response to SN, I have resumed my series only yesterday to be sidetracked once more. This time by an article yesterday in the SN by Professor Percy Hintzen under the rubric, “In The Diaspora” (ITD)

This is the fourth article in about three months by Dr. Hintzen writing for ITD in which his theorizing on Guyanese politics is extremely flawed. Please see the following responses to Dr. Hintzen.

Thursday, November 1 – “No major, global investment in Guyana after Independence.”
Thursday, October 11, – “Percy Hintzen misuses the work of a great philosopher”
Sunday, October 9 – “Percy Hintzen’s flawed analysis: Distance or manipulation?”

Dr. Hintzen’s latest piece (yesterday) in ITD is on the race monster in Guyana in which he drastically denigrates the PPP and PNC for preserving the enemy at the gate. But as he rambles on, he comes close to academic bias or scholarly mediocrity or political propaganda. Choose which one you prefer.

I quote from his article: “I believe that an alternative to party-political rule is essential to any successful attempt at meaningful transformation organized around justice, happiness, well-being, sustainability, self-determination, and human security. This effort has been perpetually stymied by the racial sentiment, hatred, and animus that has (sic) moved beyond the arena of politics to plague popular consciousness of self in the country.”

The quote above is either intellectual dishonesty or poor knowledge of contemporary politics in Guyana. You cannot be elected in Guyana by an ethnic majority community. There is no longer such a construct. To get over 50 percent of the votes, you have to win vast support from other ethnic groups. Secondly, either intellectual bias or Creole political sympathy leading to the denial of reality has led Dr. Hintzen to proclaim that he wants an alternative to the PPP and PNC. But we had that after 2006 when a multi-racial organization – the Alliance For Change (AFC) – found sympathy among the Guyanese people.

In 2015, the AFC and the WPA took state power. Where was the direction towards what Hintzen wants – justice, happiness, well-being, sustainability, self-determination, and human security?

Interestingly, at the time of the WPA in power, the editor of ITD, Dr. Trotz was an influential voice in the WPA. After the WPA came to power, she flew into Guyana in 2016 to have discussions with the WPA leaders in government. She has never reported on her discussions.

Now I ask readers to digest and reflect on the following exclamation of Dr. Hintzen in that very article of his: “When people ask me what I am, I reply that I am a Guyanese creole. This is how my identity was forged, and where my interactions have been, and continue to be, most intense.”

When you read this, you must juxtapose it with a similar exclamation by the current Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University of Guyana, Dr. Mellisa Ifill. She wrote: “I am unapologetically black – always was and always will be! I march through this life and world as a black woman.”

For my take on this announcement, see my columns of Thursday, October 8 titled, “Is UG’s Deputy Vice Chancellor, Melissa Ifill, displaying ethnic instincts?” and Wednesday, October 14, captioned; “Ryhaan Shah, Melissa Ifill and Guyana’s sempiternal ethnic consciousness.”

Well, the new year has not started optimistically. Here is a professor of Guyanese birth bemoaning the existence of the continuing race binary in Guyana and just when you thought he might save the nation, he informs us that he goes through life as a Creole man. On reading that I immediately wondered how Swami Aksharananda and Ravi Dev would react.

Another interesting dimension of Dr. Hintzen’s article is his fulminations against Western imperialism and its role in subjugating Third World people. But Dr. Hintzen, now in his late seventies, left Guyana over 40 years ago and settled in a country he definitely would describe as an imperialist power. He served Berkeley University for those 40 years which if my research is correct is funded by “imperialist money.”

As I observed above this is the fourth article within a 3 month span by Dr. Hintzen in ITD. We need to remind readers that Dr. Trotz is also a Creole person. Are we witnessing a rebirth of Creole power? But it is coming at a time when Mr. Granger lost power and the AFC and WPA are dead.

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