– Rare among those who aspire and crave their relevance through political power

It is not the best minds or intentions who aspire to national leadership through politics, once you tear away the emotional jargon and its callous opportunist public media hecklers. Like the trial of Christ, it was ‘Bribed Hecklers’ who shouted loudest to save the life of the criminal Barabbas who had robbed and raped their daughters and instead advocated to crucify the Nazarene, the revolutionary mystic preacher and sage; in whom the experienced mature Roman warrior administrator could find no fault, recognising the hypocrisy of the politics of the day. The Roman concluded and washed his hands from the Blood of ‘The Christ’ letting it fall upon the Pharisees. The rest is history, accounted for, right or wrong into the 20th century. But have we learnt en masse from what transpired then, enough to interpret its continuous manifestation before us time and time again and more so today?

When you look at the cadre of presidential hopefuls in 2020 and enquire of them, these are not inspiring souls. But they stand upon a platform, before multitudes mesmerised by fear, honed by hate, untutored, misguided but selfishly hopeful, eager to be led by a magician. Why in Guyana is it like this? Simple, we have inherited a constricted economy, 80 percent of our livelihood depends on state jobs, and state authorities wield power, worse when they are propped by ignorant spiteful political sycophants. The latter is not to be construed as semi-literate, with a contracted attitude that prohibits them from awakening, many are wealthy who crave more and more, others are certified in sometimes respected disciplines who ‘want fuh get in’ to feel important and wield the power they don’t deserve or should have.

Many workers have experienced withheld pensions; salaries and denial of benefits that should come to them in any meritocracy, because of spite, racial and political malice, countless examples are recorded under the past PPP administration. Burnham wanted to change this; he initiated many of us into the concept of cooperative businesses, provided small loans through several institutions, but as it was with the Cooperative that I became secretary of at 17 years old Kuru kuru Agri- Young Settlers cooperative (KAYS). He erred in expecting public servants to guide us into business practices. They couldn’t because they had no guiding templates, and were not trained or inclined to use innovative methods that were not approved, least offend some jealous boss.

Movements decline, because of this or that, but the ideas, initiatives and imperatives become embedded. Had Burnham not lived many of us who evolved from the Youth Corps and those cooperatives experience into small businesses without significant financial inheritances, would not have had the impulses to awaken and to forge forward regardless. But “The small man, becoming a real man” idea became stuck in our subconsciousness, so driven by challenges that appeared either compromising or too pedestrian. We challenged ourselves to realise skills, talents and oppose traditionally imposed conformity, that by the ’80s included the many luring careers of criminal enterprises that worked for a three percent with a body count of 97 percent, hoping against the whispers in our minds of relatives and friends “Hope yuh know wuh yuh doing…why yuh don’t jus? ”
We created businesses that paid bills and fed our responsibilities. Like many of us in the Arts, we proceeded in our country that did not even have laws to protect us, with institutions that didn’t know us, or recognise how serious our existence is, yet we honed our skills and struggled to meet the imposing standards of our international competition, but these were the simple times. Now there’s oil. and as the Apostle wrote: “Wide is the gate, and broad is the, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in”. Now the mental state of the relentless greed of the Pharisees and the callousness of the illegitimate mother who would cut the child in half rather than surrender it to nature’s principles are symbolically active in our society; while international conglomerates and their smiling foot-soldiers have turned their attention to Guyana. And who better to extract as allies, but those with innate racist and other contentions, already active here, who have and can facilitate media and social media ‘hecklers’ caring less to illegitimately fuel and establish the temperament for civil war, that would strip the national cohesiveness and cognisance required, closing the doors to a counterproductive national trap.

The only ethnic public figure that would stand and erroneously say that APNU-AFC supporters, especially the Afro-Guyanese benefited from the 23 years of past PPP rule, and have no historical memory of nightmares, of prejudiced job loss, marginalisation, murders of kith and kin and an outright onslaught on their values and culture would be Sam Hinds and those of his ilk. This article is written on June 7, 2020, by publishing date, the 2020 elections will be determined if it existed in any ‘CREDIBLE’ form. Instead of being riddled with fraud, and blatant criminal conduct as currently revealed, also coupled with an obvious intention to eliminate the tools of any following election petition, as revealed by this ‘Verification Re-Count’ still in progress at this moment.