AS the election disaster drove Guyana closer to the chasm, a team of CARICOM Prime Ministers came. When they were here, International Decade for People of African Descent Assembly – Guyana (IDPADA-G), whose head is Vincent Alexander, wrote the team. Here are the words of Alexander: “The International Decade for People of African Descent-Guyana wrote to Prime Minister Mottley the then Chairperson of CARICOM, on the occasion of the visit of five CARICOM Prime Ministers, indicating that Guyana’s problems are deep-seated and that elections only manifest the problem. We beseeched them to look beyond elections, if their real interest was to lend a helping hand to the peoples of Guyana. To date, the honourable ones, with our lives in their hands, have not even acknowledged receipt of our exhortations.”

For my analysis of why the PMs did not reply, see my column of November 18, 2020 in Kaieteur News. I will offer a brief reproduction of why the PMs did not respond. They probably felt insulted. Alexander was telling these people there was a larger picture in Guyana than election competition but the PMs knew he was part of GECOM for “donkey” years administering a process that he only discovered in 2020 needed to be revisited given the exigency of the sociology of race.
And when did Alexander discover the sociology of race? Not in 2015 when the PNC dominated the government, but in 2020 when the PNC lost. One of the PMs told me the reason they did not reply to Alexander was because they Google him and couldn’t find any analysis from him on the need to put the sociology of race before the need for competitive elections.

Here now is a reproduction of the mind of Eric Philips that is identical to Alexander’s. I quote from him: “The APNU received approximately 49 per cent of the vote at the last election and has zero power in Parliament.” But the PPP secured almost 50 percent of the vote in 2015 and had zero say in Parliament. And where was Philips then? He worked at a high level with that same government that morally should have shared power with the Opposition PPP. That did not happen.
Now if you Google Eric Philips between 2015-2020, you will see no writing from him similar to what he has written yesterday (Friday). I quote him again: “Winner-take-all politics has been a ferocious cancer in Guyana. It is a pernicious system that breeds and rewards ethnic domination and greed.” Now where those words were from Eric Philips when he was part of a government which won the election by a coat of varnish?
The winner-take-all system that Phillips was part of between 2015-2020 retrenched 7 thousand sugar workers, affecting 42,000 families and when that was going on, Phillips was a happy, high-level employee of a government that did such a horrible thing. In fact, the sugar workers had to take the APNU+AFC regime to court to get their severance pay.

Let’s quote Philips for the third time: “Bad political systems cough up bad political leaders, and when leaders are empowered by ethnic communities, the worst form of governance result.” Can Phillip tell us if this characterisation applies to the government he worked for that included him, Professor Clive Thomas and Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine? And why did he not eschew that “worst form of governance” when he became a high level-employee at the State Assets Recover Agency?
But there is another question we should ask Phillips. He is a top policy-maker of ACDA. Is ACDA empowered by an ethnic community? If the answer is no, why in its 40 years of existence there has not been one statement from ACDA that has acknowledged any good deed from any PPP president from Chedi Jagan right up to Dr. Irfaan Ali?

Let’s quote Phillips for the fourth time: “The most recent National Elections revealed the depth of the racial divide in Guyana, with African Guyanese being called ‘Hungry Belly Dogs’”. This is a nasty interjection in the writings of people like Phillips and it contributes to the expansion of racist thoughts. This statement borders on racial incitement and the police should ask Phillips for the evidence.
I monitored the entire five-month period in 2020 of attempted rigging by the PNC, APNU, the AFC, and covert support from certain civil society groups like the Guyana Human Rights Association, Red Thread, SASOD, Transparency International Guyana Chapter, and there was never any report of anyone using such a derogatory remark about African Guyanese.

This is the first time I am reading that such a statement by was made. Eric Phillips should do the decent thing and supply the evidence or face being ostracised, like Tacuma Ogunseye and Rickford Burke.

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.