IF you are a teenager, muchless a 30-year-old or a forty-year-old, you have to know and perhaps you know that an apology makes people look positively upon you. Once an apology is offered, people perceive three things about you. 1- You have the capacity to admit wrong. 2- There is no persistence of arrogance. 3- You recognise that you have a moral obligation to your fellow humans.

In this country, in the 2020 March elections, so many ugly behavioural patterns emerged and all were centred on the need to remove the legal results of the elections. I have written dozens of columns on these conspiracies so they need not detain us here. The focus of this article is not only the refusal to apologise by the PNC, AFC, Guyana Human Rights Association, Transparency Institute- Guyana Chapter, other civil society groups and prominent individuals but the absolute refusal to even discuss any aspect of the APNU+AFC in government and the five months of election derailment.

Any discussion has to add to history and has to generate knowledge. Even if there are positions taken for which no apology is forthcoming and the actor insist that their position is right and can be justified, then at least let us have that discussion so Guyanese can learn something from the debate.

The only person who allegedly supported the corrupted election results as enunciated by the then Chief Election Officer and is prepared to defend his position in front of others, even if those others are PPP intellectuals is exactly Alexander. He did just that on the Freddie Kissoon Show in debate with PPP parliamentarian and prominent lawyer, Sanjeev Datadin.

Mr. Alexander and Mr. Datadin slugged it out but Alexander did not shy away from enunciating what he believed in, and what he believed in met with rebuttal by the GECOM chairperson, Justice Singh who accused Alexander of trying to mislead the nation. The GECOM letter rejecting Alexander’s distorted presentation was only carried in the Guyana Chronicle. Can you imagine the GECOM chairperson accuses a GECOM commissioner of deceiving the nation and the two private newspapers refused to carry her letter?

Mr. Alexander asked me, the moderator, to tell him what wrong things Roxanne Myers did during the five-month election disaster. I quoted from the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the 2020 election. The point that is being made here is that there should be others, like Alexander, that need to tell the nation what they think of their time in government between 2015 to 2020.

If they feel they did nothing that was improper, unpleasant, unbecoming, unacceptable, illegal and dictatorial then let the Guyanese know how you feel. David Hinds has a podcast titled Politics 101, three times a week, but he never touches the 2015 regime. He has a constant guest in Clive Thomas but the two never discuss the WPA in government between 2015 and 2020 when they were both in government and Thomas held a high-profile position.

Thomas writes a weekly column in the Stabroek News but avoids any mention of his role in government; not even an ephemeral glance at the subject. David Granger has a social media programme titled, The Public Interest. You listen to Granger on The Public Interest and you would never believe that he was just recently, the President of Guyana.

Mr. Granger avoids the contents of his governmental policies like COVID-19. He will not tell us why he refused to raise the retirement age in the public service after his own commission into the public service recommended such an elevation. Mr. Granger refuses to talk about any role of his in the decision to scuttle the marijuana amendment Bill which was drafted by Nigel Hughes and put on the Order Paper to be read in the name of AFC parliamentarian, Michael Carrington.

The leading figures in the PNC and AFC need to do what Alexander did. Now Nigel Hughes has taken a similar attitude like Alexander. Dr. Randy Persaud asked Nigel to answer 15 questions from the time of the no-confidence motion at the end of 2018 right through to the fifth year of APNU+AFC rule through to the five-month election disaster in 2020.

And you know what? Mr. Hughes answered all 15 questions and in doing so, he has opened up a debate. Now you may not like Mr. Hughes’ politics but he did the sensible thing. He has responded to Dr. Persaud. I did not agree with his 15 answers but a polemic will ensue because, like me, others will confront Nigel on his position just as Datadin did with Alexander. In a forthcoming column I will look at three answers of Nigel that I believe are fatally flawed.

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.