On the eve of a visit of former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo to Guyana in September 2020, a number of organisations and a group of individuals, consisting mostly of women activists published a letter in the Stabroek News of September 17, 2020. The correspondence had two parts.

They embraced a call from the Guyana Human Rights Association (the world’s most invisible civil society organisation) for Guyana not to be part of US’ plans to interfere in Venezuelan politics, and to reject any interference by countries in the internal affairs of Venezuela.

The other aspect of the missive was a call to ensure that in the context of Mr. Pompeo’s visit that Caribbean people must ensure there are no machinations (my word) to endanger the Caribbean as a zone of peace.
The letter from these individual and groups came less than a month after the Caribbean as a zone of peace, was in danger of imploding because of five months of election rigging in Guyana.

If the rigging was successful, there would have been two disastrous consequences – CARICOM would have seen such much pressure piled on it that it would have broken up and the international sanctions on Guyana would have destabilised the region. The zone of peace in the Caribbean would have evaporated.

The list of names below did not publish one word in condemnation of five months of a colossal attempt to rig the election. With Venezuela threatening to annex 70 per cent of Guyana’s territory, the silence of the names below is reverberating all over Guyana, as it did in 2020. The Venezuelan president held a referendum last Sunday which Venezuela’s electoral council claimed was approved by voters.

That referendum seeks to destabilise the Caribbean through Venezuela’s aggression against Guyana yet after the announcement of the referendum and now with its completion, there has not been one spoken or written word of condemnation by any of the names listed below.
There has to be an explanation as to why the names below would voice concern for Venezuela’s sovereignty in 2020 but not Guyana’s sovereignty in 2023.

Here is my explanation. As in the case of GHK Lall for which I have done two columns (Saturday and yesterday), the names below cannot and do not want to separate party politics in Guyana from the existence of the country itself.
For these people, the Botanical Gardens, Water Street, the NIS, the Providence Stadium, UG, etc…, are not national properties that belongs to all Guyanese and will be national property long after the PPP as a party is gone, they are PPP’s properties. For the names below, the PPP is Guyana and Guyana is the PPP.

So, it is not in their interest to condemn Maduro because the PPP is in power and they do not like the PPP. Remember the names outlined below and expose at all times their hypocrisy. I’m not finished with them. Watch me! Here is the list:
Caribbean Women’s Regional Network
Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA TT)
Women Against Rape (WAR), Antigua and Barbuda
Beverly Bain, (Canada & TT), Womantra
Rev. Dr. Rachele ‘Evie’ Vernon O’Brian
Linnette S. Vassell (Jamaica) Community Development and Gender Specialist
Honor Ford-Smith – Caribbean Women of the Diaspora
Rosina Wiltshire (Barbados)
Judith Wedderburn (Jamaica) Caribbean Women’s Network
Maziki Thame (Jamaica)
Opal Adisa Palmer
Audrey Roberts (Bahamas & Jamaica)
Peggy Antrobus (Grenada) Caribbean Women’s Network
Vanda Radzik (Guyana) Caribbean Women’s Network
Alissa Trotz (Canada, Guyana) Caribbean Women’s Network

Rawwida Baksh
Danuta Radzik
Red Thread
Karen de Souza
Wintress White
Halima Khan
Joy Marcus
Patsy Lewis (Grenada)
Josephine Whitehead
Hollis France
Kamala Kempadoo (Canada/Barbados/US)
Stephanie Leitch (TT)
Sherlina Nageer (Guyana)
Pauline Melville
Nan Peacocke (SVG)
Nesha Haniff
Gender Consciousness Project, University of Michigan
Jenny Jones (Jamaica)
Asha Kambon (TT)
Hazel Brown (TT)
Louise (Lana) Finnikin (Jamaica)
Sistren Theatre Collective
Denise Harris
Rev Patricia Sheerattan-Bisnauth, Guyana Presbyterian Church
Jacqui Burgess
Network of NGO’s for the Advancement of Women TT
Zakiya Uzoma-Wadada
Emancipation Support Committee TT
Women Working for Social Progress
Millennium Sistahs TT
Immaculata Casimero (Indigenous leader)
Michelle Asantewa (UK)
Delores Robinson, GROOTS TT
Raquel Thomas (Guyana)
Alicia Roopnaraine
Jocelyn Dow
Equality Bahamas
Vanya M. David,
President, Dominica National Council of Women
Gabrielle Hosein, TT
Roshini Kempadoo (UK)
Alexandrina Wong, (CARIWA)
Angelique Nixon (TT & Bahamas)
Amina Doherty (Antigua & Barbuda)
Beverley Mullings (Canada-Jamaica)
Bonita Harris
Pauline Bullen, Director, Institute of Gender Studies, UG
SASOD (Guyana)
SWAG (Guyana)
Jasmine Thomas-Girvan (TT & Jamaica)
Foundation Ultimate Purpose, (Suriname)
Maggie Schmeitz, Suriname, Caribbean Women’s Network
PROJEKTA, Foundation for Women & Development (Suriname)
Monique Essed-Fernandes (Suriname)
Guyana SPEAKS
Policy Forum Guyana