Dear Editor,

MR. David Hinds, to his credit, has come out from hiding behind his desk at Arizona State University and his Online radio programme, Politics 101, protected by his US citizenship, to respond in the Kaieteur News of Monday, April 10, 2023, to my letter of April 4, 2023.

In that letter, I questioned Ogunseye’s freedom to importune our Security Forces to join in an attempt to overthrow our duly elected government. Mr. Hinds now seeks to claim that Ogunseye “never uttered those words”, and that this is my interpretation of what he said.

I have taken the trouble to listen to every word of Ogunseye’s speech at Buxton, recorded and played on KAMS TV on March 9, 2023. First, Ogunseye dedicates the major part of his speech to pursuing a false narrative of exploitation of African Guyanese by an Indian-led government, campaigning solely on the basis of race and racial division in a multi-racial country.

He accuses, for instance, without a shred of evidence, the PPP government in the past of “executing Africans, using the Police Force, and then the Phantom Force”. His entire speech is devoted, not to building and developing a united multi-racial country, but rather one of division between Guyanese of African descent and the rest of the population.

“Our first objective is to get the African community in a state of battle readiness; you cannot have freedom unless you fight for it… We come here tonight … to unite Buxton with the wider community of African people again, and prepare you for your coming battle, as there will be a battle”.

Ogunseye’s entire speech seeks to divide and pursue confrontation between African Guyanese and Indian Guyanese.

Here is a sample: “Come hell or high water, the African people of this country; the children of Cuffy and Accra who have liberated this country from the swamps, who have built every important structure in the country, who have built the roads and the plantations before any indentured workers arrived in Guyana”.

He goes on: “And today, those who come after us and their leadership ‘is’ seeking to build a system of political domination, which is intended to keep Africans at the bottom of the social ladder.”
So, I say to Mr. David Hinds, is he, too, not embracing this language of racial division, racial resentment and, ultimately, race hate?

According to Mr. Hinds, I have misinterpreted Ogunseye’s Buxton call as an attempt “to overthrow the government”. Hinds argues that Ogunseye “never uttered those words”. Really? Verbatim, this is what Ogunseye had to say:

“Today, Guyana has become a hostile place for African and African people. Time is not on our side; we are asking our African brothers and sisters to rise up and get our share of the oil wealth. We cannot wait on the election cycle to address this matter. Sometimes people tell me the struggle to remove the PPP would be hard and long; I don’t necessarily agree with that, because, sisters and brothers, at the end of the day, no government can survive if they don’t have the support of the military, and those who carry weapons for the State. And the PPP is in a funny situation.
“The reality is that the Army and the Police are the majority African Guyanese. And, sisters and brothers, once we organise our people, and once we begin to fight, we will ensure that our brothers and sisters in uniform will do the right thing. And the matter will be over in days; not weeks”.

The WPA leader goes on to advise his followers, “Fortunately for Guyana, you can almost count them on the fingers of one hand, that the “Local Government Elections are not an opportunity to start a resistance… Instead of mobilising to participate in elections on election day, we mobilise, instead, to turn whatever is the day to a day of national resistance and African uprising”.
And then the closing message from Ogunseye: “We come to tell you that our brothers and sisters in uniform would do the right thing, and this thing will be over quickly.”

What, might I ask, Mr. Hinds, is Ogunseye advocating, if not, as I have said: “That our Security Forces turn their guns against a duly elected government to support a mass uprising to overthrow the government?”

Mr. Hinds has a penchant for quoting my uncle Peter D’Aguiar’s dictum that the role of an opposition is “to oppose, expose and depose the government”.
He made those remarks in Parliament to describe the opposition’s job in Parliament, and not, as Ogunseye and, it appears, Hinds advocate in the streets with the support of the Security Forces.
As for Mr. Hinds’ buy local explanation to explain away his unvarnished condemnation of Guyanese Africans for buying products produced and sold by Guyanese Indians, it’s laughable, if not pitiable.

Mr. Hinds’ response to me, also, carefully avoids an explanation for having labelled the Indian Guyanese members of the PNC “traitors” and “slave catchers”, for criticising Ogunseye’s radical rant, which Mr. Hinds, unbelievably, describes as advocacy “for racial pride, self-love, self-reliance, dignity and equality”.

Mr. Hinds, of course, omits entirely to explain the fact that he was a candidate of the APNU+AFC government, which was actively involved, for many months, in refusing to recognise the results of a free and fair election, and attempting to rig the ballot count in order to illegally remain in government.

In his two-hour rant against me on his Politics 101 radio programme from his desk in Arizona, to which I have already responded, Hinds complains that I describe him and his colleague in New York, Rickford Burke, as dangerous men.

I did so, and do so, as I have already said, not because I believe them to be, in themselves, dangerous, but because they continue to embrace, espouse and defend the dangerous doctrine of political division and confrontation in our multi-racial country.

Hinds concludes his letter by setting out premises for banishing racism with four points: Comprehending its origins and its consequences, being humanely anti-racist, and being willing to banish the social privileges which flow from, and accrued from racism and, finally, remove the obstacles to racial inequality and inequity.

I agree with him, and I ask him to look again, open his eyes, cast aside his inherited biases and join those who truly believe that we are one Guyana, one nation and a people with one shared destiny.

Yours sincerely,
Kit Nascimento