EACH time I reply to Vishnu Bisram’s extremely misleading statements in the newspapers of Guyana, I immediately think of the vast qualifications he has said he has. I am not disputing his multiple Masters and doctorates, but such a vast accumulation of knowledge should endow one with enlightened opinions.

Mr. Bisram must be the only academic in the world that argues that Pax-Americana is still strong and ubiquitous. Even scholars who support American hegemony in the world concede that international relations now rest on a multi-polar world. For my rejection of Bisram’s theory of America as the centre of a unipolar world, please see my column of Saturday, August 5, 2023 titled, “Mr. Bisram needs to read Sir Ron Sanders.”
I asked in that column which world Bisram is living in. Then, in a recent column, I asked if Bisram has even a modicum of understanding of what takes place in Guyana. This was in response to Bisram, saying that Kaieteur News (KN) is the ultimate free press in Guyana. Every harsh word should be used to condemn that opinion because it is the opposite of reality.

The KN behaves more poisonously in its anti-government frenzy than any opposition party in Guyana. There is only one word used to describe the anti-government propaganda of KN – degenerate. Does Mr. Bisram know what is going on in Guyana? Even the civil society groups that hate the government no longer send their missives to KN. The daily circulation of the Chronicle and Stabroek News are way above KN. For my response to Bisram’s description of KN, see my piece of Wednesday, June 5, 2024 captioned, “Vishnu Bisram on Kaieteur News.”
Mr. Bisram is at it again. In a letter to the press of Friday, June 14, 2024, he advises political parties to have intra-party democracy like those of the UK and US. I now ask Mr. Bisram, as a man with multiple doctorates and Master degrees, if he monitors the politics of the world. Why cite the UK and US only and not Third World and Caribbean political parties?

Here is the methodology the UK Conservative Party used to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Each contender had to get 100 nominations from the Conservative Party parliamentarians. Mr. Rishi Sunak was the only one that met that criterion and he became Prime Minister. There was no vote by the party’s parliamentarians or the party itself. Does Mr. Bisram read what is taking place with the confrontation between Diane Abbot, one of the most respected black leaders in the Labour Party in the UK?
In the Democracy Party in the US, congressional representatives who condemn Israel for what it is doing in Gaza are facing efforts to unseat them within their own party, targeting them at primaries. Mrs. Hilary Clinton is targeting one of the most progressive Black congressmen in the US, Jamaal Bowman. Mrs. Clinton is endorsing Bowman’s opponent who has been accused of Islamophobia.

The danger in the Eurocentric writings of people like Bisram is that people might believe him. But there is a sadness to such writings. The approach still juxtaposes the Western world with the Third World in terms of the existence and practice of democracy. After all that the world has seen from the West since the committal of genocide in Gaza, are there people in the Third World that are still prepared to engage in that juxtaposition?
Sadly, the answer is yes and we see that answer written boldly on the face of CARICOM. Jamaica and Trinidad are refusing to have the Caribbean Court of Justice replace the Privy Council (PC) of the UK as their final appellate court. It violates commonsense to continue with the Privy Council.
Here are two arguments against the retention of the PC. Justice must never be dispensed based on possession of money. But poor people have to have enormous sums to take a case to the PC. First, there is travel fare, then visa approval, then hotel accommodation. Where a poor mother is going to find such large sums to finance her son’s case at the Privy Council?

The second argument is that 60 years after Independence many Third World countries still cling to the belief that British judges are of superior quality (quality in both senses of character and intellect) and thus the Privy Council is a better forum.  There is absolutely nothing in the history of the Privy Council to draw the conclusion that the judges there are of a deeper quality than judges in the post-colonial world. The different Julian Assange trials in the UK where he is constantly denied bail should be instructive for the colonial mind in Jamaica and Trinidad