‘David Hinds’ barbs are warranted’

Feb 24, 2025 Letters

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Dear Editor

Earlier in his political career, in collaboration with Cheddi Jagan’s, largely Indian supported, People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and others, David Hinds, an African, became involved in the struggle for liberation against the autocratic rule of Forbes Burnham’s, People’s National Congress (PNC), which is mainly supported by Africans, and was thrown into prison. Today, Hinds is being threatened by Jagan’s successors in the PPP as he seeks liberation for all Guyanese, but especially Africans, from the PPP’s even more dictatorial yoke.

With a quite telling backdrop, Hinds joins Aubrey Norton and Nigel Hughes at the top of the totem pole in the struggle for freedom, democracy, equality and human rights in Guyana today. Their task must be guided by Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.’

Politics becomes the pulpit of both hope and destiny, and these will only successfully coalesce if the context of the former is properly grasped and transformed. The leaders and their parties must adequately assess their context and craft strategies to bolster their supporters, diminish the effectiveness of their detractors and win the war.   The good leader must not confuse hope with destiny, e.g. the wish to live in a liberal democracy with notions that can only exist withing it. Also, not unlike what occurred during the COVID pandemic, these kinds of struggles go beyond giving strategic priority to personal freedoms.

Ad hominem barbs such as those recently used by David – ‘house slave’, ‘uncle tom’, ‘lick bottom’ – are secondary but useful tools that have been around for centuries. They are an important part of the liberation struggle that help to focus the attention of recalcitrants on the need for solidarity and the possible damage of their actions.  In a recent excellent piece, Lelon Saul concluded, ‘I do not seek to endorse ad hominem attacks but to contextualise the rhetorical strategies of a scholar-activist operating within a long tradition of anti-oppressive resistance’ (KN: 21/02/2025).  But we should note that although such [ad hominem] attacks are usually fallacious, they can be legitimate when a character critique is directly or indirectly related to the point being articulated. … distinguishing clearly between these cases is important to evaluating the validity of statements people make. Good or fair uses of ad hominem critiques should, in fact, persuade us, whereas unwarranted uses should not’ (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/character-attack/).

Notwithstanding, the tirades of the PPP and their propagandists that accuse him of undermining democracy and contributing to ethnic division, Hind’s barbs are warranted. Indeed, no other party in the history of Guyana has undermined and is still undermining democracy and national unity like the PPP and that is why they want Africans to forget the past. It was PPP’s 1951 foolhardy stated allegiance to international communism that was mainly responsible both for Burnham autocracy and the PPP’s continued efforts to hold on to its supporters by way of aapan jaat politics and now blatant vote buying. Once Cheddi Jagan died in 1995, unwilling or unable to properly contextualise the 1992 return to majority rule –‘democracy’ in its lexicon – the PPP, which now has been in government for almost three decades, has made conditions such that the Annual State of African Guyanese Forum in 2022 could feel justified in headlining its conference ‘Resisting the emerging apartheid state’.

This was not much of an exaggeration: the PPP is vociferous in is support of the Palestinians but the situation in Guyana is not dissimilar from what is taking place in Israel itself, where ‘the Jews appropriate the state and make it a tool for advancing their own national security, demography, public space, culture, and interests’ (August 6, 2021 ‘Palestinian Citizens and Religious Nationalism in Israel’. Raphael Cohen-Almagor).

The 2024 Transparency International (TI) Report observed that ‘In Guyana state capture by economic and political elites has led to resource misappropriation, illicit enrichment and environmental crimes.’ …. although the country has created anti-corruption institutions and laws, transparency and law enforcement are very low, and attacks on dissenting voices, activists and journalists increasingly common. … Despite constitutional guarantees of an independent judiciary, the judiciary has been adversely affected by the ethnically based political divisions in the country.’

Over the decades, many prominent and knowledgeable persons in and out of Guyana have indicated that here are ways of transforming the country into a truly liberal democracy, but the PPP, still locked in its ethnic and communist modes, is set on total, perennial, control. Since it must take political control of Africans to say in government, it has been systematically economically and political impoverishing them. Long ago I noted that, ‘The desire to place greater African membership under the existing PPP leadership explains why there is not a single area in African social life that the PPP has not sought to dominate or suppress. Just look around: Linden, the Georgetown City Council, the TUC and Public Service Union, and even the University Guyana. Last week, a letter in the Stabroek News discerned that ‘In Guyana there is a coordinated effort (by the PPP) to control sports, culture and the arts’ (‘The furtive establishment of political dominance’ (SN:17/04/2013).

Now the PPP is set upon making a concerted effort to capture the African pastors. Only a few days ago, commenting on an article which quoted President Irfaan Ali to the effect that his government is discussing currently ways to help religious leaders, Audreyanna Thomas, among other things, suggested that the pastors should ask the president when he will confirm the acting chancellor of the judiciary and the acting chief justice, who are Africans, in their substantive position.  ‘Why is the government using the Guyana Police Force and the Director of Public Prosecution’s Chambers to criminalize African Guyanese leaders? Why is the government destabilizing African Guyanese communities economically by removing the subvention to IPADA-G. What is the government doing about equitable distribution of resources and the extremely loud cries that the government is governing the country in racist manner?’ (DW: 12/02/2025).

Although for ethnic reasons the various ethnic groups believe that it is preferable to have their ethnic party in government, with a will to compromise this is not an impossible task. The 2024, V-Democracy Index classified the country as nearing a fully fledged autocracy and one cannot have the current level of autocracy, elections manipulations, etc. without everyone being negatively affected. Less than a quarter of the electorate believe that the government is legitimate. Therefore, all Guyanese, but particularly African Guyanese who are more adversely affected, have a duty and right to struggle against the PPP’s dictatorship.

The African National Congress (ANC) during its fight with the apartheid in South Africa stated well the context within which the ad hominem comments made by Dr. David Hinds to the African community is justified. ‘We have always defined the enemy in terms of a system of domination and not of a people or a race… As we have done in the past, so shall we continue, consistently and unreservedly, to support, fight for and abide by the principles of international law.’

Sincerely

Dr. Henry Jeffrey

(‘David Hinds’ barbs are warranted’)

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