ON Monday, March 4, former Prime Minister, Samuel Hinds, was the guest on the Freddie Kissoon/Gildarie Show.

Tracing his interest in politics, he focused on his eventual leadership role in a civil society group named Guyana Action for Reform and Democracy (GUARD). This was a quintessential middle-class grouping whose raison d’être was to press the Desmond Hoyte presidency to concede free and fair elections.

GUARD was formed in early 1990 and had in its hierarchy some prominent middle class personalities. As it became popular, it pressed for an interim government with elections to be held within a two- year period. Mr. Hinds brought up the issue of GUARD on the show when he was discussing the instinct of entitlement which he said some folks have demonstrated.

To demonstrate his point of entitlement, he zoomed in on his experience with GUARD. He explained that he saw the instinct of entitlement for himself in GUARD when people in GUARD argued that the PPP and its leadership were not culturally eligible to rule Guyana, and thus although free and fair election was a requirement, these people felt their class was more eligible to govern Guyana.

Mr. Hinds made another shocking disclosure. He said the folks arguing for exclusion of the PPP on the basis of culture and class in the membership of GUARD (not in the leadership only but in the wider membership) constituted fifty per cent. In other words, about half of GUARD membership wanted the PPP out of the equation.

Mr. Hinds said that he would definitely put it at 50 per cent. He said a retreat was called for at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Plaisance to settle the controversy over the PPP issue since the other 50 per cent took the position that their cause was free and fair elections and whoever wins, then, they should form the government.

Mr. Hinds said his position was if Cheddi Jagan wins he be the president. The former Prime Minister intoned that he always saw Dr. Jagan as a decent politician and thus could never be against him becoming president.

But the MCC in the membership of GUARD was against a PPP government. For the record, GUARD nominated Mr. Ashton Chase to head the interim government it proposed, rejecting the name of Dr. Jagan.

Mr. Hinds left Guyana the next day and because of my historian instincts, I contacted him and requested if some names can be cited and I will promise never to reveal them if they are given to me in confidence. One of the names up to last year wrote editorials for the Stabroek News.

The deep, Freudian feelings of the Mulatto/Creole class (MCC) were always there but it was the return of the PPP to victory in 2020 that generated implacable opposition to the PPP government. The importance of Mr. Hinds’ revelation lies in who he is. He was the chairman of GUARD.

He saw first-hand, the mentality of the MCC and how they perceived Indian politicians in this country. Mr. Hinds has never talked about this aspect of his politics and Guyanese politics in general and his revelation should be a gold mine for those who use class analysis in writing about politics in Guyana.

I did a 14-part series recently in this newspaper on the MCC and you can access them in the online edition of this newspaper. The essential point of the MCC’s atavistic reversion to the rejection of Indians in politics needs repeating.

After MCC elements came to power in 2015, the thinking was that at long last entitlement had become reality. The 2015 government was an unadulterated MCC regime and there was a triumphalist relieve that non-Christian Indian government in Guyana had finally come to an end.

The MCC became mentally destabilised after the 2020 election results showed a PPP victory. There was a genuine collapse of psychology in the world of the MCC in Guyana after March 2020.

President Granger was seen as the perfect middle class politician to lead Guyana and the MCC was emotionally satisfied that he was in power. In the WPA and AFC, the MCC felt that its role in government in the future was assured.

The world of the MCC collapsed after 2020. There is no need to repeat the contents of those 14 articles, but I did offer huge examples of the attitude of the MCC and the media it controlled to the actual rigging.

In those 14 articles, there is illuminating evidence that the MCC was psychically damaged by the results of the 2020 elections. Sam Hinds said he saw the cultural superiority and eugenics (my words) of the MCC in 1990. The whole of Guyana saw it after March 2020. Guyana is still seeing it.