POLITICAL activist Dr. David Hinds struggled to defend the APNU+AFC Government’s track record and accusations that he advocates race hate and racial animosity during a heated discussion with fellow political activist Freddie Kissoon on The Gildarie-Freddie Kissoon Show on Wednesday night.

The episode of the show touched on questions of race and governance in Guyana, and the outlook for the country in the face of increasing foreign investors. The show was moderated by Gregory Gildarie, a former Kaieteur News reporter.

As the show opened, Kissoon immediately called out Hinds, accusing him of peddling racial sentiments along with other members of the APNU+AFC coalition. According to Kissoon, in his 50-odd years as a political, social and human rights activist, he has not seen anyone so persistently invoke “race hate” as much as Hinds.
“The way I see David Hinds, he is somebody who constantly preaches race animosity,” Kissoon declared.

Turning to Hinds, sitting adjacent to him, Kissoon said: “David, you are the most consistent preacher of ethnic animosity in this country; I say that with candid political conviction. You preach nothing multi-racial; you contribute nothing positive to this country. You must start to preach multi-racial politics.”

Both Hinds and Kissoon are longstanding political commentators on the local scene. Kissoon writes a column in the Kaieteur News daily newspaper, while Hinds is a member of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), a former member of the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) coalition, which is headed by the People’s National Congress/Reform (PNC/R).

The APNU had joined forces with the Alliance For Change (AFC), and served in government from 2015 until it was voted out of office in 2020, after a failed attempt to rig the general elections that year. Following the APNU+AFC’s defeat at the polls in 2020, the WPA parted ways with the APNU coalition in August of that year, citing several violations of the principles governing coalition politics.

Attempting to defend his actions, Hinds claimed that his rhetoric is guided by his love for his fellow Afro-Guyanese people, a sentiment continually proffered by members of the Opposition. Kissoon dared Hinds to name individuals from any other party who preaches what he called “racism” the way Hinds does.

“I have never seen anyone from the PPP/C; any multi-racial organisation relentlessly speak about Afro-Guyanese people being denied, being demonised, being mistreated as any other member of any other race. You have consistently done this, and you have shown no evidence,” Kissoon said.

JUST WORDS
Kissoon said the Opposition’s love for Afro-Guyanese is not illustrated beyond words, as he called out Hinds and the APNU+AFC for doing nothing for Afro-Guyanese during their five-year reign in government.

“He gets up here and say, ‘I love Afro-Guyanese people’. That’s the only thing they (the Opposition) have to fool [Afro Guyanese] people; they don’t have anything else to hold on to. For five years, Clive Thomas and David Granger failed [Afro-Guyanese] people; they fooled [Afro-Guyanese] people on the elections; they fooled black people about legislation to empower them. I love Afro-Guyanese is the only mantra; the only sermon they have. They can’t tell [Afro Guyanese] people anything else; he can’t sit down here tonight and say what the WPA has done for [Afro-Guyanese] people during 2015 – 2020,” Kissoon charged.

Kissoon pointed to the failure of the former APNU+AFC Government to repeal marijuana laws that saw many Afro-Guyanese youths being incarcerated for small amounts of marijuana, and the failure of that government to adjust the gap between the 55 years old retirement age for public servants when the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) payment of pension begins at 60 years old.

“David Hinds and his hypocrisy have to be exposed; he was part of a government with the famous Clive Thomas and Rupert Roopnaraine. The PNC that he loves has done nothing for [Afro Guyanese] people. Youths smoking a ‘spliff (small amount of marijuana)’ are still in jail, and Clive Thomas and Rupert Roopnaraine and the WPA had power for five years,” Kissoon said.
Kissoon also called out Dr. Hinds for his constant attack on members of the government.

“The sedition that you’ve constantly spouted about what this government is doing, most of the ministers could sue you for libel. You are speaking about libel, but you libel people on your programme all the time,” Kissoon said.

Hinds then went on to explain away the then APNU+AFC Government’s closure of the GuySuCo sugar estates, which saw the firing of over 7,000 workers, the vast majority of whom are Indo-Guyanese.

The closure of the estates is seen by many as a racially-motivated move by the APNU+AFC Government to punish Indo-Guyanese, who are predominantly supporters of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C).

Hinds maintained that he did not believe the government’s “intention was racist”, however, Kissoon strongly dismissed this claim.
“He said the sugar worker issue was not racial… 42,000 Indian families were affected… He was part and parcel of APNU+AFC,” Kissoon noted.

Dr. Hinds was also asked to justify the WPA’s joining of the Coalition Government that included the PNC/R, which was responsible for the assassination of Dr. Walter Rodney in June 1980.
Hinds sought to defend the WPA’s alliance with the PNC/R-led APNU+AFC coalition as being “in the interest of the country”, to which Kissoon replied, “There is so much that is misleading.”