IT IS obvious that the greatest American political thinker, Tom Paine, had no influence on the diplomatic training of Ambassador D. Brendt Hardt. But Hardt is not alone in this respect. After all, Tom Paine is held up as an example of everything bad ever since the day he was termed “a dirty little atheist” by Theodore Roosevelt.Paine’s writing was clearly anathema to Hardt.
The speeches by Minister Priya Manickchand and Ambassador Hardt, in my view, brought to the fore the meaning of Freedom and Independence.
Hardt’s speech conjured up all the vestiges of colonialism we fought against, while Manickchand’s reply spoke to the lofty principles and ideals of Freedom and Independence which we fought for and won, and hold so dear to us as a people.
In this regard, I am reminded of Tom Paine’s most beautiful statement: “Independence is my happiness and I view all things as they are without regard to place or person. My country is the world and my religion is to do good.”
Manickchand’s “No!” to Hardt’s harking back to the colonial era served as a poignant reminder of Mahatma Gandhi’s warning that:
“A no uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a yes uttered merely to please or worse, to avoid trouble.”
What occurred on that eventful evening at Turkeyen was reminiscent of a Governor talking down to the serfs in the type of society that has gone down as backward in the annals of history.
Incidentally, come 2016, we will be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of our country’s Independence. I sincerely hope we will celebrate the occasion in grand style. And that from next year, 2015, Government will launch a countrywide discussion so that the truth will be told of the struggle for Guyana’s Independence. And just as we are witnessing the revelations emanating from the Rodney Commission of Inquiry, in the same way the truth must be told about the real fighters for our country’s Independence.
Those who booed and heckled Manickchand at the Turkeyen residence made no contribution to either the struggle for Independence nor against Burnham’s dictatorial rule; they most likely connived as satraps to their political sponsors to uphold the vestiges of neo-colonialism and bureaucratic capitalism under the much-hated Burnham dictatorship. They must have benefitted enormously during those dark days of its existence.
We had Quislings in our midst then, as we have in our midst now.
Talk about putting country first? It took a reception at the House of an Ambassador for us to see those who have no faith in the symbols of our Independence express, in so ugly a fashion, their preference to nibble at the grass nourished by the Hudson and the Potomac Rivers.
Their loathsome and disgusting display of anti-nationalism was carried as far as to proudly proclaim that Manickchand did not speak for them, thus raising the question: If Manickchand did not speak for them, then who did?
Therein lie their open betrayal of the virtues of nationhood and self-respect for country and people.
Apropos, another poignant reminder of the words of our National Anthem:

“Dear Land of Guyana, to you will we give;
Our homage, our service, each day that we live;
God guard you Dear Mother
And make us to be
More worthy our Heritage;
Land of the Free”
Are those who booed and heckled Manickchand truly “worthy of our heritage”? Are they really “heirs of the pains” from whom we were born?
Hardt must have been well pleased, as he boarded the plane on his last journey from our beautiful country, that he left behind a cóterie of inveterate critics whose vapid bleatings and platitudinous pretensions at justice merely serve to invoke and imitate those who hold up Tom Paine as the worst example to follow.

Clement J. Rohee
General Secretary