THERE are times that a column elicits a large number of responses from readers, the reason being a stunning disclosure of the event you analysed, or the person or organisation that you placed under the microscope.
Earlier Friday morning, I received a call from a senior Minister of Government based on what I wrote in my Friday column. From the morning onwards, I received communications from more people who asked me if I could explain what happened and why did it happen. By Friday evening, I counted 33 responses that included five telephone calls. My Friday column was one of the most commented on since I began writing in the newspapers 36 years ago. No doubt the curiosity came about because of the person I wrote about.

Just in case you missed that Friday piece, let me briefly recapture it before I explain on this page what several persons asked me to do. I live in the same compound with the Vice-Chancellor of UG, Dr. Paloma Mohamed. My neighbour asked me to take care of her pet while she was away. The cat does not stray far. By afternoon, I couldn’t find the cat, so I decided to look into every yard in the compound.

When I reached the yard of Dr. Mohamed, she drove up with her husband and watched as I looked into the yard and her neighbours’. They did not speak to me, and I thought absolutely nothing of the matter. The next day, Dr. Mohamed sent off an email on the string that members of the community participate in, except me.

Dr. Mohamed, in an indignant use of words, told the community that I was looking into her yard, and it warrants an explanation. Some members of the community were extremely upset, including the son-in-law of former PPP leader Kellawan Lall. He is a friend, and felt that Dr. Mohamed treated me badly, and he was going to send a rude reply. I persuaded him not to.

Dr. Mohamed or her husband could have easily spoken to me from the car to enquire about what I was interested in, given the fact that Dr. Mohamed has known me for over 20 years; after all, I am not an unknown quantity in Guyana. So, persons who know me, after expressing surprise at Dr. Mohamed’s attitude to me, wanted to know why I think she acted that way. Every one of the 33 persons who contacted me told me that the incident was strange.

Here is my explanation, and I will not dwell on Dr. Mohamed any further. I believe economists, political theorists and sociologists will not achieve competence in their work if they do not employ the methodology of class analysis. It is basic to understanding the sociology and political economy of every country. In today’s world, even strong right-wing academics employ class analysis to explain the political economy of the U.S.
Since I became a Chronicle columnist, I have done about 15 articles tracing the evolution and political contours of the Mulatto/Creole class (MCC) in Guyana. I finally saw the complete Freudian life of the MCC during the five months of election fraud in 2020.

It was a revelation to me, and it was mentally painful for me to watch, because the people who supported the fraud did so from the Freudian fortresses of their minds, had an ethnic reason for so doing, and they threw out the democratic instincts I knew they once had.

I knew a large number of MCC personalities up close and personal, but March to July 2020 revealed to me that I did not know these people at all. It is for this reason that March – July 2020 was a psychic revelation for me, and inflicted a psychic trauma on me that I will never recover from. The twin of psychic revelation and psychic trauma has changed my life forever.

But I was lucky; the psychological damage that was inflicted on me between March and July 2020 came late in my life. If I had seen the Freudian clothes these people wore in those five months when I was much younger, then I do not know how I would have mentally coped with life. I struggled with these people, because I was an existentialist human moved by the philosophical school of anarchism, which instructs that power has a congenital built-in mechanism that leads it astray, so power must always be critiqued.

I struggle with these people in Guyana who betrayed philosophy and the world in 2020, because I never saw the deep, driven, Freudian instincts of resentment for Indian people with the accompanying belief that Indian people are culturally unsuited to administer a Caribbean country. I will never be the Frederick Kissoon I was before 2020.

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.