SIR Shridath Ramphal was one of the largest voices for the Third World among global actors. There was never any doubt by the leaders of the countries of the Global South where Mr. Ramphal stood. He had global reach but that penetration was always put in the service and interest of the Third World.
He never relented in his pursuit that in global politics, international economics and power relations between the West and the Global South, the Third World was disadvantaged and needed to assert itself. Western nations who felt he was too Third Worldist blocked the pathway to become the UN’s Secretary-General. I think this was a disappointment he carried with him throughout his life.
His death comes at a time when in our midst there are Guyanese men in advanced age who have failed to decolonise their minds and thus remind us that the psychological penetration of colonial values is one of history’s permanent negative legacies.

Sir Shridath died three days after a Guyanese who held a huge human rights job at the United Nations, Dr. Bertrand Ramcharran published a column in Stabroek News (SN) last week Tuesday, in which he urged Guyanese to read a book, “Autocracy Inc.” by an American author, Anne Applebaum, who sees nothing positive about the Third World countries and shamelessly argues that the West is the standard bearer of international values. Knowing the world perspective of Sir Shridath, he would have dismissed its contents.

I have rebutted Ramcharan’s colonial mind in a two-part series last Thursday and Friday, so his colonial mentality should not detain us further. Sir Shridath died one day after a letter in SN was featured. It was done by a member, Mr. Mike Persaud, of a civil society group named Oil and Gas Governance Network. Like Ramcharran’s piece, one does not have to wonder how Sir Shridath would have treated what Persaud has advocated for Guyana.

Here is what Persaud urged this country to do: “Seek a relationship with one of the ABC countries. Ask the selected country to appoint a Governor-General to “oversee” our Constitutional system with the specific objective of helping the nation overcome its racially-divided state.”
When post-election violence gripped Guyana in 1997, business icon, Yesu Persaud rang Sir Shridath for his intervention. Sir Shridath engineered a CARICOM détente. He did not seek US, EU or even Commonwealth assistance. He felt confident enough that CARICOM had the intellectual strength and political will to solve a disastrous problem in CARICOM. Sir Shridath saved Guyana in 1997 through a CARICOM initiative.

Mr. Persaud left gigantic democracies like India, Brazil, South Africa and even CARICOM itself and advocated that Canada or the United States or a country within the European Union must come to Guyana and compose a blueprint for Guyana’s main sociological sensitivity – the racial divide. But which ABC country has the sociological capacity to do for Guyana what CARICOM cannot?
Who are these countries? Is the US one of them? Isn’t the race problem in the US deeper and more troubling than Guyana’s? Can American officials come to Guyana to use Persaud’s words “of helping the nation overcome its racially divided state.” But why don’t they start in their own country? For anyone to write that the sociology of race in Guyana is more problematic than the US is ignorant.

Which country in the EU Guyana should invite? Surely, not France. Guyana’s racial divide is less troubling than France’s. In Guyana, the police force is predominantly African while the Indian population is in the majority. Which year has the police force shot and killed an Indian citizen? In France, where the majority of the police force is white, the police kill a non-white person at least once every three months.

Surely, it cannot be Germany. Does Mr. Persaud feel that Germany deals with its race problem in more successful ways than Guyana? In fact, Germany has two racial motifs that would disqualify it immediately from playing any helping role in Guyana. One is that Germany has declared that Israel is its reason of state. So, the Jewish people are a special group to the German state. Secondly, in its new citizenship law, applicants have to answer questions about how Germany mistreated the Jews but there is no question of how the Germans mistreated the Namibians. On May 28, 2021, Germany apologised to Namibia for committing genocide when it ruled Namibia. But in the new citizenship law, there is no mention of Namibia only the Jews.

Ramcharran and Persaud will not be the last two persons in Guyana to think that the West can teach the Third World to be civilized. But one hopes Guyana and the Global South produce more Shridath Ramphals.
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.