UNDERSTANDABLY there is currently heightened interest in electoral politics, derived from the fast approach of 2011 general elections to elect the next government and the next president. The media contributes to this heightened interest by publishing the identity of presidential candidates, results of commissioned polls, aspects of electoral strategy including, policy and even analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of likely contending parties.
Eric Phillips’s recent contribution following his public line that concentrates on race and ethnocentricity, bewails the plight of the African in contemporary Guyana.
In his recent article, he resorts to history to add weight to his argumentation about the denial of African patrimony.
According to the Eric Phillips electoral doctrine, it was, it is, and will always be, about race in the absence of divine intervention.
He contends that, based on his analysis of race and ethnocentricity in Guyana, an Afro-Guyanese will never be elected (at a free and fair elections he implies) as a head of state and government in Guyana.
We must anticipate the Phillipses of this world erupting at this time of elections fever in Guyana: Phillips is one of the more recent of a long list of Guyanese advocates of race based political analysis.
That analysis which he espouses denies voters the discretion of voting based on the anything else other than race.
The Eric Phillips of Guyana essentially is saying to Guyanese, disregarding party manifesto, forget the policies formulated and implemented don’t entertain any discussion about achievements.
One wonders when the current PPP/C administration appointed him as the honorary counsel in South Africa, he saw it as an exception to his race based analyses and went ahead to equally apply his race analysis there. He obviously had to lament the plight of the minority whites.
Was it the untenability of such and argument that hastened his departure from South Africa?
The Eric Phillips of today will play on ethnic insecurities that they consciously cultivate.
In the days of the PNC dictatorship, the Eric Phillips race based analysis was the tool of the apologists who preached that three was no alternative to dictatorship, were Afro-Guyanese to achieve their historical destiny to lead in Guyana.
Eric Phillips has talent, he was exposed to the best Guyana had to offer among other things. Yet as enlightening as he appears to be, he offers little to Guyanese and even less to Afro-Guyanese.
It is difficult to reconcile his scholarship with his current unsound analyses and its advocacy.
Guyana deserves better from Eric Phillips.