MY daughter (my only child) has given up on me writing my autobiography. Instead, she suggested that I leave the material with her and maybe she will do it in the future. I want to do it but I was trained in history and the value of history is the passage of knowledge to the present and future generations so they can learn from the past.
When you write history, people must become more knowledgeable in what they know from reading you.

This knowledge must guide them in avoiding the mistakes that you once made. It must provide them with a picture of their country then and now. That is the purpose of a memoir. You must offer facts to people so they either become more educated or add to their knowledge bank. They must know about the past and in your memoir, you have an obligation to inform them of the shape of the past when you lived in it.
Here is a relevant example to reinforce my point. Eusi Kwayana wrote a letter about how biased the magistrate was in the trial of Walter Rodney’s brother in the 1980s. That magistrate, Norman Jackman, was horribly biased in the trial. Kwayana wrote “a certain magistrate.” Ms. Jackman died a long time ago, and Guyanese have a right to know what she did to Donald Rodney.

So, when you write an autobiography you have to offer an accurate portrait as much as possible. I was over-eager to read Clement Rohee’s memoir because he has intimate knowledge of some of the most famous and infamous events in contemporary Guyanese history. But in his memoir, he chose not to discuss what someone like me, a political contemporary of Rohee and Guyana, wanted to know about.
So, I don’t think I will write it because I have to say what I must say and I am not going to carry my wife through the torture of 12 libel writs. When I was a little boy, I used to hear my mother say that she ain’t able “climb court step.” If I write my memoir, in this litigating society, perhaps in more than a majority of countries, I will have to “climb court step” and, at my age I refuse to do so and which lawyer is going to take on 12 libel writs for me for free because it will have to be for free.

Imagine what I will face when my memoir is out. Imagine a man named Charles Ceres threatened to sue me for saying my parents knew his parents, and since he believes that is false, he will sue. If you can be threatened for such a harmless statement then think of the mountains of libels I will receive and there will be oceans of them because I am a dinosaur; I have been around since 1968, so I have seen the contents of Guyana since 1968.
So that autobiography of mine may never see the light of day. I wish I could write it so I can expose so many people, dating back to 1968 when I first entered politics as a polling agent for the PPP in the 1968 general election, who have done so many wrongs to the people of Guyana.

Since 1968, I have watched how men and women pretend to care for Guyanese, pretend to care for the poor and powerless, pretend to be patriotic (maybe Samuel Johnson was right when he said, “patriotism is the last resort of a scoundrel”) but lacked the values it takes to be a good person. Of course, on reading this you may want to say that I am “bigging up” myself and that I may be as bad as the people I criticise.
In this country, you have to beat your own drum so I will beat my own drum and say that I am not without my faults but I believe in doing the right things for people who need to be helped.

And since we are on the topic of people who need to be helped, what I will do in forthcoming pieces, as early as next week, is to do snippets of an autobiography. I will look at people that I know who have died so they can’t sue me, like I have recently done on Rex Mc Kay and Ramon Gaskin. And I will write of good people who have made my existence possible. These are people that Guyanese need to know about because I think they have done good not only for me but for others. So, look forward to silhouettes of memoir.
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.