WE start with the first evasion. Here is what Phillips wrote: “Winner-take-all politics is a pernicious system that breeds and rewards ethnic domination. Bad political systems cough up bad political leaders, and when leaders are empowered by ethnic communities, the worst form of governance result.”
I then wrote the following: “Can Phillips 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 Recovery Agency?”

Phillips replied to me, abused me by describing me a “pathological liar” who suffers from “normalised schizophrenic idiocy” but he has not answered if APNU+AFC was not a winner-take-all regime that was not ethnic-based.
Here are the words of Raphael Trotman writing in the Stabroek News on December 12, 2021: “The PNC discovered this from 1966 to 1992 and 2015 to 2020. The PPP discovered this from 1992 to 2015. What it comes down to is that almost half of the population will not accept you.”
Trotman is a far more politically honest person that Eric Phillips. What this quote forcefully revealed was that the APNU+AFC was ethnically based and half the population did not accept it. Trotman is African Guyanese and occupied a huge space of importance and power in the APNU+AFC regime. Phillips will not answer my question now or ever.

This is the way these Afro-centric activists operate and they believe that young African Guyanese are deeply gullible that they cannot detect their intellectual bankruptcy. Do you think young African Guyanese have any respect for the intellectual standing of Henry Jeffrey after they read what he wrote?
Jeffrey noted that in the 2020 general election, every one of the 10 Regions (except Region 8 which Jeffrey did not include) was massively rigged by the PPP and in most cases the rigging was from 30 per cent to 60 per cent.
Jeffrey will never explain how the PPP did it. He knows he wrote appalling nonsense but his contempt for African Guyanese allows him to believe he can fool them.

Now for the second evasion of Phillips in which he exposes himself once more in the eyes of the nation and particularly African Guyanese, the audience that Phillips targets.
A letter-writer asked Phillips one of the simplest questions you can ask in politics- which country has a power-sharing government. Phillips hasn’t learnt one of the fundamental lessons of life which is pathetic and shameful on his part. It goes like this – if you do not know what to say, shut your mouth so you cannot be accused by anyone of talking nonsense.

Here is Phillips’ shocking, mediocre, jejune and asinine response. “I hope you traverse the internet because you will realise there are many countries where power is shared including the United States of America.”
There is no adjective more suitable to describe this response than “asinine.” Philips used 19 words to tell the letter-writer there is power-sharing elsewhere rather than naming the countries. Why should the questioner use the internet to search when Phillips was asked the question and he could save the gentleman time and energy by naming the countries?
He cannot name any country that has power-sharing, not even Belgium and Switzerland. Not even Northern Ireland (NI) because ultimate power lies with the British Government. Unable to cite examples of power-sharing governments, in a paroxysm of embarrassment, Phillips blurted out – the USA. What a comical response!

The USA never had a power-sharing government. What Phillips did was try to fool his target audience by substituting minority presidency for power-sharing. Minority presidency is when the president’s party does not have a parliamentary majority. Bill Clinton was a minority president. In his second term, Obama was a minority president. Macron in France is a minority president. We don’t read about minority presidencies in the Western democracies because Western academics and the Western media do not use the term “minority presidency.” They reserve it only for the Third World.
But even with minority presidency in the US and France, there is hardly substantial diminution of presidential power. The House of Representative impeached Bill Clinton and he remained in office. The House impeached Trump and he remained in office. The French Assembly was ready to vote down a policy by Macron when he invoked special presidential power. Can Phillips tell us which two parties shared power under the Trump presidency?

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.