I GET some probing, curious and absorbing emails from readers. I will discuss one of them here. I was asked how I could criticise Eusi Kwayana so severely and I am cozy with Kit Nascimento. The reader wants to know if I find Mr. Kwayana a heroic person.

The reader wants my take on the juxtaposition of the two. I read the email three times and concluded that two factors have to be in the explanation – race and the inevitable disaster of permanent power in Guyana.

Here then is my response. First, I am not cozy with Mr. Nascimento. I have a correct relation with him based on his current politics. I have a positive relation with Mr. Nascimento because in the context of the possibility of permanent power in Guyana, he played a meaningful role in stopping never-ending power.
I lived through never-ending power in Guyana. I cannot speak with authority of permanent power in other countries only mine. Mr. Burnham possessed eternal power and in 2020 one of the most devoted admirers of Burnham, David Granger, was poised to have permanent power.

I cannot put down on paper how I felt at Kaieteur Radio in March 2020 when I was monitoring the election and saw that the election result was being tampered with. There was an inexplicable fear in me.
There was paranoia in me. I feared that we were going back to eternal power like what we had under Forbes Burnham. Something deep in my psyche told me to stand up at Kaieteur Radio and in my columns in Kaieteur News and fight against eternal power.

The forever president of the country was going to be someone who thought Forbes Burnham was a great leader. I knew there was hardly anything great about Forbes Burnham’s leadership. There were positive moments but Mr. Burnham’s personality had shades of demonic hardness that I believe destroyed (not almost but destroyed) Guyana.
Mr. Nascimento has his questionable past. Mr. Kwayana has his excellently glorious past but when Guyana needed Mr. Kwayana, he receded into dark caves of ethnic yearnings. I will come to this aspect of race but let me finish with permanent power. It was incumbent on all who lived through the longevity of power from 1968 to 1992 to ensure it did not happen again.
The picture was easy to paint. Mr. Granger and PNC leadership would have administered Guyana for a long time to come if they were allowed to rule Guyana after APNU+AFC had lost the election.

The APNU+AFC rigging the 2020 election simply meant they would have rigged the 2025 one and the 2030 one. The logical deduction is simple as kissing the palm of your hand. Why if they changed the results in 2020 they would not have done that for the next four national elections.

What Guyana was facing then was what it endured under Burnham. Mr. Burnham did whatever he wanted and had no conscience to accept that many of his irrational directions were hurtful to the population. I saw Kwayana in a negative light because he chose to overlook the evil consequences of permanent power. Kit Nascimento allowed his voice to be heard in denouncing forever power.

We still have to ask the question why Kwayana chose that pathway. I will have to be extremely brief here because I want space to be left so I can acknowledge the great things Kwayana has done. Kwayana at a deep Freudian level is pro-African though not anti-Indian. I believe Kwayana was not being anti-Indian when he refused to condemn the rigging. Mr. Kwayana saw the PNC, WPA and the AFC as pro-African parties and their continuation in power was a racial preference for him.

As to Kwayana’s past glories I would never deny them. I have never denied that Clive Thomas, Rupert Roopnaraine, the WPA, the GHRA, Moses Bhagwan and so many others played a crucial dialectical role in weakening the totalitarianism Guyana endured under Burnham. One simply cannot erase the past. Brave people did brave things to oppose PNC dictatorship and Eusi Kwayana was one of them.

But he was not simply one of them. His activism was phenomenal. His priceless value was that as a high-level African he dented the racial binary by confronting Burnham and allowing for a multi-racial instinct to grow in Georgetown in particular. I, Guyana, and the world cannot deny that.

I acknowledge Kwayana’s contribution. But he faltered badly in 2020 and the fault was crucial because Guyana was facing a return to a period where Kwayana’s patriotism helped to free Guyana. Ironically, he was willing in 2020 to take us back to that horrible age. How sadly ironic!

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.