Fostering a new political culture

Jan 26, 2025 Letters

---

Dear Editor,

Reference is made to the response authored by Mr. Nigel Hughes regarding several concerns raised in my letter, “Hughes turning the crime wave into political theater is not only reprehensible but cruel.” I was most enthused to have my questions, as well as those posed by my friend Shaquawn Gill, finally addressed by the learned Mr. Hughes.

What I anticipated would be a reasoned rebuttal from an experienced attorney quickly revealed itself to be paradoxical at best—reading more like the deflections of a conspiracy theorist evading accountability.

Hughes begins his missive by asserting that debating the number of Afro-Guyanese deaths—whether 1,200 or 400— “misses the forest for the trees.” In essence, Hughes is authoritatively suggesting that he can oscillate between wildly differing figures—without providing an iota of evidence or list of alleged victims—and still expect to be regarded as a credible and authoritative source.

In a previous presser, he invoked the Holocaust to claim that the numbers are “secondary.” In his recent letter, Mr. Hughes draws reference to the Middle Passage and the disproportionate suffering of Africans throughout history. He uses this to posit that it “is an insult to the community” to demand qualitative and quantitative evidence, adding that “the death of even a single individual, of any ethnicity, through state-sponsored violence is a tragedy that demands accountability and justice.”

Putting aside the fact that the Middle Passage and Transatlantic Slave Trade are extensively, like the Holocaust, documented, these rhetorical pivots—from the Holocaust to the Middle Passage—reveal a troubling pattern: a politician willing to exploit and trivialize the profound collective suffering of others as long as they serve as convenient means to his own divisive political ends.

It is not that there has been zero attempt to quantify and contextualize the original period of violence Hughes referred to. A 2019 Stabroek News report entitled “Prison-Break Carnage: A Stabroek News Investigation” extensively documents 420 persons killed between February 2002 and September 2006. This figure is broken down as follows:
a) 151 persons of various ethnicities murdered by bandits.
b) 239 persons killed during confrontations with law enforcement as well as in unexplained circumstances.
c) 30 security officers lost their lives during this period.

The publication acknowledged that the circumstances of these Crime Wave deaths have long been the source of “heated disputation” and that any deaths not recorded by the publication “would only be a small number.”

It is profoundly disturbing to take the number of deaths during a specific period, inflate the number, and contort it, albeit without evidence, for pure political gimmickry. This is the manipulation of people’s emotions and trauma—an utter insult and a grave disservice to those who lost their loved ones as well as their bereaved families.

In his letter, Hughes now focuses on shifting the narrative into calling for a Commission of Inquiry (COI), despite insisting that it is by no means a diversionary maneuver. His newfound assertion that the burden of proof “should not rest solely on one individual but on a collective judicial mechanism,” and adding that “the government has both the capability and resources to initiate such an activity,” is a textbook example of evasion and deflection.

The key question remains: If he has possessed this evidence all along, why did he withhold it from President Granger to facilitate an inquiry? Why is it only now, in the year 2025, when he has risen to the helm of his party, that he remembers this evidence he’s been sitting upon? This further raises questions: Did the learned Counsel feel that the Granger government was incapable of executing a comprehensive inquiry? Is he impugning improper motives on the part of former President Granger?

The letter summarily addresses previous highlighted examples of the Warrau Immigrants, the No-Confidence Motion, and the 2020 Elections Saga as “symptoms of a deeper malaise within our political and judicial systems, which can only be addressed through structural reforms and comprehensive investigations.”

On the surface, this might seem to be a lofty call for meaningful discourse on systemic reform. However, I recall a Stabroek News article (Nigel Hughes says hasn’t returned to politics, February 23, 2020)—a mere eight days before the March 2 elections—in which Mr. Hughes mounted the Coalition platform in Andyville, Region 10, and told the crowd: “They are saying I can’t add, but we are going to elections in March 2020 instead of March 2019—do the maths!” Hughes was, of course, referring to his floating of the nonsensical and debunked argument that 34, not 33, was the majority out of 65 needed to pass the No-Confidence Motion, an argument taken up by the Granger government to defy the successful NCM.

What was Hughes’s statement on the APNU+AFC campaign platform, a little over a week before the elections, if not a blatant admission of deliberately orchestrating an election delay? And when asked about his appearance on a political platform—one in which he takes credit for a successful diversionary and delay tactic—Hughes told the paper he hadn’t returned to politics. Five years later, he has clearly ‘returned,’ and with the same playbook of division, diversion, deflection, and a refusal to take responsibility for his direct actions.

I invite Mr. Hughes to join me in fostering a new political culture—one that moves beyond race-baiting, conspiracy theories, and hollow platitudes. Instead, let us shift toward a substantive focus on policies that will shape the Guyana of tomorrow. Let us commit to a higher standard of politics—because better must come.

Yours faithfully,

Nikhil Sankar.

(Fostering a new political culture)

---

• “heated disputation, Commission of Inquiry, holocaust, Mr. Nigel Hughes, Shaquawn Gill, Stabroek News

---