WE have a very young population in this land, maybe the youngest or perhaps one of the youngest. These youthful Guyanese do not know who many iconic Guyanese are and some of the main historical events that shape our country’s general landscape.
It is through polemics, debates, intellectual confrontations, historical reflections, and current exchanges that knowledge is passed on in a society. One of my favourite thinkers is the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Knowledge was passed on to me about aspects of Freud’s work through a brilliant exchange between two scholars in two editions of the New York Review of Books (NYRB).

In the November 4, 1999 issue, philosophy professor Colin McGinn at Rutgers University wrote a piece entitled “Freud under Analysis.” In the February 24, 2000 issue of the same journal, a rigorous debate among scholars followed. This was an excellent polemic on Freud. Readers learned. If you cannot obtain these two issues for free in the online edition of NYRB, then please contact me at 614-5927 or fredkissoon@yahoo.com. I have the printed issues.
In Guyana, no knowledge is being passed on because people propound their theories for purpose of propaganda, not for the passing on of knowledge, and what happens is that our young country has not learnt anything. I know this because for the 36 years I have been a columnist, people have asked me questions as recent as yesterday (Wednesday).

You get these outpourings asking for analysis and interpretations, and when they are offered, people learn. I get requests for places where books that I have mentioned in my commentaries could be found.  Last week, I cited the autobiography of the former solicitor-general in the 1980, Oscar Ramjeet.
I referenced a chapter in the book in which Ramjeet brought out the eerie decline in the psychological integrity of President Burnham, in which he would summon ministers and high level state officials to discuss sensitive state business in the wee hours of the mornings but none of that would be discussed.
Burnham, according to Ramjeet, filled the hours talking about personal inconsequentialities. So I got a few e-mails asking me about Ramjeet, whom he was and where to find the book. People want to know things about their country. But what we have in Guyana today is a tsunami-like outpouring of condemnations and derogations of the PPP government by a fixated cabal of anti-government personalities, but there is never the obligation to explain anything to people.

I could offer you literally hundreds of examples. The rest of this column consists of a few examples. The latest is Eric Philips. He wrote the following: “Winner-take-all politics has been a ferocious cancer in Guyana. It is a pernicious system that breeds and rewards ethnic domination and greed. Bad political systems cough up bad political leaders, and when leaders are empowered by ethnic communities, the worst form of governance result.”

I simply asked Phillips if that characterisation applies to the government of APNU+AFC, 2015–2020, that he worked for at a high level. Read Phillips’ reaction to me in Tuesday’s newspapers. It consisted of a personal attack on me (see my column yesterday (Wednesday). So what happened? Young Guyanese did not get an analysis about the nature of the APNU+AFC administration.

The guiltier one in the failure to pass on knowledge to this young nation is Professor Clive Thomas. A learned man whose scholarship is evident in the huge volume of academic work, he took his party into the government of APNU+AFC. After his government lost power, he became a weekly columnist in the Stabroek News. He has been writing since 2020. Yet, to this date, Thomas has not seen the obligation to give his analysis, whether positive or negative