THE ethnic determinism and class mentality of those that I struggled with in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s have lacerated my psyche in ways that I think I will never mentally overcome.
The son-in-law of President David Granger, Dominic Gaskin, one of the huge leaders of the Alliance For Change put it this way on his Facebook page of July 17, 2020 as the 2020 election was being rigged; “While I empathise with many who do not wish to see the PPP back in power, what will certainly ensure can never justify what is contemplated.”
What did he mean by “what will ensure?” Here is my interpretation and it is based on my experience of all the rigged elections in Guyana after 1964. If you have a country where people cannot vote to change its government then you will have one group in power permanently. This is what happened under the PNC party from 1968 to 1992. People die and lives were broken in that long period in the struggle for free and fair elections.

Gaskin’s simple words need reflecting on. He wrote that he could understand if you did not want the PPP back in power, but don’t tamper with people’s right to vote because what will come after that will be incredible disaster. We saw that disaster from 1968 to 1992 and many that were brave in that period witnessed what happened in 2020.
Gaskin’s position was logical – you don’t want the PPP back in power, okay fine, but don’t let that desire cause you to prevent people from making their choice. This is the position that those who did not want the return of the PPP should have taken. In this respect, Gaskin proved to be a superior person to them.

What the WPA, Red Thread, the Mulatto/Creole class, individuals like Moses Bhagwan, Eusi Kwayana and others who fought for Guyanese to have the right to vote should have done was to emulate Gaskin. Let the votes be counted, respect the result, then, judge the PPP by its performance and if it did not meet your expectation, then your quarrel with the government begins. But don’t accept the fraudulent manipulation of a general election because you did not like the result and the winner.
There were people who were not born yet or too young to endure the tragedies of illegal general polls in Guyana’s post-Independence period, but in 2020 they stood up for the rule of law and the right to vote. Opposition politician, Timothy Jonas comes to mind. He contested the election, accepted the results, now he is a critic of the current government. But he didn’t side with the riggers because the results put the PPP back in power.

This has been at the heart of my emotional rejection of the people that I struggled with from 1968 to 1992. They revealed for me to see that from 1968 to 1992, there was no innate instinct of freedom, justice and decency in these people. Deep in their Freudian mind, was a choice based on ethnic mentality and class preferences.

In April, the commission report into the 2020 election was made public. Its descriptions of the extent, immorality and degeneracy of the fraud made other previous rigged national polls look like child’s play. The section on the role of the police force indicated that Guyana was moving in the direction of a coup from March 2020.

To date, the Guyana Human Rights Association; Transparency Institute of Guyana; Red Thread; In The Diaspora; Moray House; the various middle class women groups; The Usual Suspects; The Women Lawyers’ Association, the Bar Association and many more in the same category have not commented on the judicial report into the 2020 election fiasco.
This is one of the most important documents to have emerged in post-colonial Guyana. In fact, this report can be compared in importance to any completed commission of inquiry throughout the history of this country. Such a report was not historical enough to warrant even a short newspaper letter by any of the groups named above.

Keep this column here of Wednesday, August 30 and remember these words in this very column- all of the groups named above will rush to publicise their disagreements and condemnation of the report into the Mahdia inferno even before the ink of the chairman’s signature is dried on the paper.

It will happen. I am absolutely certain about this. The first reaction will be a letter in the newspapers signed by 25 signatures from The Usual Suspects. If after two weeks there is no such letter, I will stop writing for the Chronicle because it meant I didn’t know these people at all. I will win. I know them at a very deep analytical level.