I WILL be unable to attend the autobiography launching of Moses Nagamootoo today at 17:00 hrs at the Pegasus. At the same time, I will be part of a symposium on Gaza at the CIOG/MYO.
In the context of European attitudes to Russia in relation to Ukraine and the Israeli committal of genocide in Gaza, my presentation will take a revisionist look at Europe in the 1930s, asking the question as to how did Europe treat Hitler and how did the Jews react to the election victory of the Nazi party in 1933.
I would have liked to be at Nagamootoo’s launching to hear what he has to say, because I did two condemnatory columns of his autobiography two weeks ago. However, as castigating as we are of the contents of Nagamootoo’s book, we have to give him credit, and I think immense credit for writing about what has now become an important part of the current history of Guyana – the APNU+AFC government of 2015-2020.
The APNU+AFC won the 2015 election and all eyes were on Guyana, not only from the region but the world. The world was curious to see how the post-PPP administration would govern. It did not govern properly.
It showed it knew nothing about how to govern a post-colonial state.
The great figures of the 1970s – Drs Clive Thomas and Rupert Roopnaraine — who along with their colleague/friend/comrade, Walter Rodney, awakened consciousness in the 70s generation just faded in ideas and vision once they acquired power.
Nagamootoo has the courage to publicly document his role in the 2015-2020 period. You may not agree with what he wrote and I certainly reject what he explained in his autobiography, but let us acknowledge that he saw it necessary to explain to Guyanese.
David Granger and Clive Thomas should do the same. I have left out Dr. Roopnaraine because it is public knowledge that he is not well. I think all Guyanese should wish him a fast recovery.
Apart from Nagamootoo’s book, only Dominic Gaskin and David Patterson have spoken about their roles in the APNU+AFC regime. Gaskin has appeared three times on the Freddie Kissoon-Gildarie Show and Patterson once. What they had to say about the APNU+AFC government is very intriguing.
Professor Thomas does a weekly column in the Stabroek News since he left government. That would be about 200 columns, but in none of those columns there has been even a line, much less a paragraph on that important historical juncture of which he was a part.
The Guyanese people and the world at large would welcome his brilliant academic mind explaining that period in current Guyanese history.
Clive Thomas has long been one of the Guyanese I admired. But the 2020 election rigging got in the way.
I am grateful to Dr Thomas for whatever positive person I have become. After Desmond Hoyte became president, Drs Thomas, Rudy James and Harold Lutchman wrote to Hoyte requesting Burnham’s fatwa against me working at UG be rescinded and Hoyte did that.
When I refused to do national service as a UG student and I was kicked out, Dr Thomas prevented my return to poverty. He employed me as a research assistant to do work on the sugar industry. I will always be grateful to him and I will never want to be ungrateful to him.
But as someone who helped to chaperon me in politics, and someone whose praxis molded my own praxis, I was deeply disappointed that he did not come out with the brilliant mind he has and return to the days of the Clive Thomas I knew and denounce the 2020 election-rigging. Thomas’ intervention would have been an emotional relief for this nation. But sadly, that was not to be
Had Thomas done that, his heroic status would have been preserved. It is a personal loss to me that I have parted company with him. But for me, country comes first and I would never want Guyana to return to permanent power as under Burnham.
I believe both Thomas and Granger owe it to this nation to do what Nagamootoo will do at 5pm at the Pegasus today – explain to Guyana and the world about the 2015-2020 period. Mr. Granger does a programme named, “The Public Interest” and it is simply amazing that in none of those episodes, he has even remotely made reference to his time as president.
It is incredible that as a man who has written an enormous amount, including being the editor of a monthly news magazine, Mr Granger has not published one word on the APNU+AFC government. Surely, in at least one episode he could have explained something about the APNU+AFC administration. Strange eh!