IN my column of Wednesday, January 18, 2023, titled, “Dark days: A reply to Yuri Westmaas,” I wrote the following: I will never stop replying to people whose prejudice, bigotry, subjective mind, propagandistic intention, false narrative and alternative facts have found presence in the society. I have argued and will continue to argue that it is incumbent on the public intellectual to offer a counter-narrative, because one side of the story is dangerous for society if that story is left unchallenged.
My response was a reaction to a newspaper letter Westmaas published on January 17, 2023 in which he denounced the PPP government and showered praise on David Hinds. From reading that letter, it was clear that Westmaas had an Afro-centric perspective on Guyana. In that 2023 correspondence, Westmaas mentioned that his brother, Nigel Westmaas, fought the Burnham dictatorship. He did not mention that his brother’s politics has since morphed in a pure anti-Indian direction with distasteful characteristics of class and colour.
Westmaas is at it again. This time on Saturday, June 8, 2024, when the song was repeated. The lyrics are about him and his brother, Nigel, when they were young, roaming the office of a great party back then, named the People’s Progressive Party and that party has degenerated.
There is no mention of the degeneration of his brother’s politics and his own and that of the WPA’s of which his brother, Nigel, is the gatekeeper of this fossilised entity obsessed with race politics and violent incitement of which two of its leading practitioners have been charged by the state for violent advocacy.
Yuri Westmaas chose not to tell us about the huge role his brother played in this once great party. So the PPP was once a great party whose office he and his brother frequented and has now deteriorated, but nothing about the WPA which his brother still plays an essential part in.
We come now to the moral compass of Yuri Westmaas and when my argument unfolds, then readers will see how urgent it becomes a task to reply to people like Westmaas, because their malignant and racially motivated output should not go unanswered because, we have a young population in this country.
Here are the words of Westmaas last Saturday: “On his worst day, Mr Burnham would never refer to an opposition member as a “low life.” Mr Burnham used words far more insulting than those two words, most of which were directed against Dr Walter Rodney. Burnham had descended to levels that make the term “low life” look like baby language. Mr Burnham went beyond description of low life. He destroyed untold numbers of lives.
I know what Burnham did to me and my wife, so I say unapologetically that Mr. Westmaas who is in the cleaning business must clean his mind. Here is more of Westmaas who jumps on a moral mountain lecturing his readers on moral values when one can ask if he has any. Here is Westmaas, “I am proud to be associated with David Hinds and Rickford Burke.”
What word do you use to describe someone like Westmaas? I have an obligation to the newspaper I write for because if Westmaas sues over the use of pejorative adjectives that I would love to assign to him in this very column, then the paper is sued also. Here is a man telling us the use of the words, “low life” is unacceptable, but tells us he is proud to support the politics of Rickford Burke.
What is important is to read between the lines when both Westmaas brothers write. The subliminal mind is there to see. The politics of anti-Indianness and colour and class are there to see. If you can criticise Vice-President Jagdeo for using the term low life to describe others and you proudly proclaim your embrace of the politics of Rickford Burke, then you open yourself to ridicule.
But what is wrong with the term, “low life” in public debate? What is so shocking and unacceptable about describing someone whose values are destructive and racist as low life? Is “low life” a more unpleasant term than “asinine,” “idiotic,” “uneducated” among others? Let me use the term “low life” here in my rebuttal to people whom I feel have dangerous, low-life minds.
The politician or civil society activist who says Guyana must come out of oil production is a low life. The politician or civil society activist who says the teenager charged with 20 murders must have the indictment changed to only one charge – arson- is a low life. There are people in the diaspora who sit happily enjoying the good life, but see race in everything when they talk about Guyana; they are low lives. A racist is a low life.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.
