SEVERAL times in my column, I have mentioned a powerful figure in the AFC that during a discussion on the AFC’s email string in July 2020 suggested that Guyana should have ethnic partition. That person mentioned being fed up with Guyana’s ethnic politics and thought that it would be best if Guyana divides itself into an African country and Indian country.
At the time, the person was a minister in the APNU+AFC government and was a strong advocate of an APNU+AFC’s declaration of an en election victory and to remain in office. The AFC email string had about sixty persons at the time and only Dr. Vincent Adams confronted the ethnic partition advocacy. He completely and absolutely rejected the suggestion.
Since 2021 when I wrote about this partition desire and Dr. Adams’ intervention, Dr. Adams has remained silent. Since that partition outburst, there hasn’t been one former and present AFC executive that has touched the subject. Here was a Minister of Government in discussion with the AFC leadership who suggested that Guyana should split into two countries.
The separation idea was not uttered publicly but in the electronic age we live in, once a private conversation contains horrible racial language and it is released for the public to hear then it becomes a matter of national importance. No public official would survive politically if in a private conversation they use the “N-word” in a disparaging way and that conversation was aired for the society to hear.
No citizen would be immune from prosecution if in a confidential chat they advocated the killing of a senior member of government. Even though it was a private exchange, once the words are made public by someone or some organisation, the words become a national issue.
No Minister of Government has ever advocated racial partition of Guyana since self-government in the 1950s. Only one person has made that call and he was not a minister of government. That was Eusi Kwayana who was known back then as Sydney King. The subject is taboo. The people of this country and the politicians that ask for their votes would not travel in that direction.
It must be remembered that this AFC bigwig uttered the partition idea while being a Cabinet member. What I cannot understand is that I have written about this ethnic advocacy several times and I have brought up the name of Dr. Adams each time, and yet the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) has not sought to get in touch with me.
I believe the reason is that the ERC feels that it is in the private domain. I beg to disagree for four reasons. One- it is now in the open because I have put it there and the ERC should contact me. Two- this person was a serving minister therefore that person should be held to a higher standard. Three- that person is still part of the AFC leadership.
I am asking the ERC if it wants a person elected to parliament that has advocated separate ethnic states thus Guyana no longer exists. Four, the discussion took place among top AFC leadership and many of them still have the stuff on their phones. I can name three of them that the ERC should interview because they told me they disagreed with the partition call.
Interestingly, no one in this country has pursued this gross act of patriotic betrayal but those who are silent find their voice quickly once the subject is someone connected to the government. I am contending that if a private conversation with sensitive contents is released to the public and the subject is a high-level government official or a senior political leader of the PPP, then immediately there are shouts for and demands for the ERC to intervene.
Can one imagine that during the attempts at election rigging in 2020, a Minister of Government from the AFC, afraid that the PPP will come into power again, told the AFC leadership that maybe Guyana should be partitioned? Dr. Vincent Adams who writes profusely in the newspapers criticising the government has refused to respond to several calls of mine on this page for him to publish his position on what was said on that fateful month of July in that fateful year of 2020 among AFC executives and AFC’s second tier leadership.
Guyanese will read more letters in the newspapers from Dr. Adams but not one word will be printed on the partition exhortation. Guyanese will continue to see an ocean of derogations of the government from the AFC but nothing will be said about the then minister’s demand for ethnic separation.
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.