I WATCH people from my corner and because of my vast experience, I can see through them. I have had several requests to write something about the daily letter writer who says he is deeply Catholic. I was the very first Guyanese to have written about this guy when he came on the scene about 12 years ago.

I saw through this guy as he began to write letters and some columns for the Stabroek News in which he deliberately set out to show people that he knows grammar and the English language. But he ended up as a national joker because no one knows what he was writing. The guy was looking for publicity. As the years unfolded, it was clear to me that this re-migrant was looking for his 15 minutes of fame.

I know those types like the back of my hand. In his insane quest for publicity, the daily Catholic writer befriended the Stabroek News then the Kaieteur News. Not only was he looking for fame but also to make a living in Guyana. He came back from his 10th-rate citizenship from the US to Guyana and with two small children to support, so he had to make a living. I have no quest to deny a person the right to earn a living. That would never be me.

The daily Catholic writer is not in the intellectual category of those who hate the PPP government and use their intellectual training to condemn the government. I think such people need to have their arguments and activism examined, but not the quotidian anti-PPP hate that the uneducated daily writer puts out in Kaieteur News, Stabroek News and Demerara Waves.

I am not going to comment on the anti-government poison that the daily Catholic writer puts out. The reason is that I do not think his output should be commented on because it is not intellectually based. The daily Catholic writer perhaps never heard about Plato or Karl Marx. Why engage such a numb mind? I will not do it. Let the man make his living.

There are those who put their intellectual training in the service of anti-government commentaries; that is their right, but people like me should use our intellectual training to confront the narratives of these people. One such intellectual is Dr. Desmond Thomas who back in 2020, formed the civil society entity, Electoral Reform Group (ERG). Dr. Thomas’s deputy, former UG lecturer, Alfred Bhulai, was the guest on the Gildarie-Freddie Kissoon Show last Monday evening.

I asked him as I did the ERG leader Dr. Thomas in June 2021, why the ERG has not issued a statement about the attempts at fraud in the 2020 national elections? For my 2021 request to Dr. Thomas, please see my column of June 26, 2021, titled, “Why the refusal to describe the March 2020 election as attempted rigging?”
Mr. Bhulai did not answer but informed us that he published a letter in his own name asserting that there were attempts to rig the 2020 poll.

Well, the ERG is still to offer an official statement on the illegal manoeuvrings in the 2020 poll. But Dr. Thomas is in the news again, so once more I will renew my demand on him about the ERG’s position on the 2020 elections. Writing in the newspapers on June 4, 2023, Dr. Thomas had this to say: “The country continues to be in the grip of a completely unsuitable governance structure with a toxic atmosphere of political acrimony and disaffection that cannot signal a path to progress.”

So Dr. Thomas knows what the shape of Guyana’s sociology is. His opinion is a huge insight into what he thinks Guyana has become. Yet, this very gentleman is still to pen a statement about what he and his group make of the 2020 elections.
But wait! Dr. Thomas knows more about what goes on in Guyana. On July 6, 2023, again in the newspapers, he noted: “The Dharamlall case will seriously undermine the credibility of the police, the social protection services, and the DPP in the eyes of the public.”

So, I continue where I left off in June 2021 with my question to Dr Thomas, but with an extension of my query. Did Dr. Thomas read the report of the commission into the 2020 elections?
If he did, would he agree that what is in that report has seriously undermined the credibility of the Guyana Police Force? More importantly, since his group is concerned with electoral reform, does he think it is more relevant on his part to comment on the election report rather than Guyana’s sociology and the Dharamlall case?