THERE isn’t an event or an occurrence that displays the difference in profound political instinct between the PNC and the PPP than Arrival Day.

The PPP as the ruling party has over the long years, resisted demands from Indian rights activists to officially name the calendar event as Indian Arrival Day. Most Guyanese know the holiday is in recognition of the day of May 5 that Indians from India came to this country.

The reason is clear and simple.

The PPP feels that Guyana is a sensitive ethnic mosaic and one has to tread carefully. The refusal by the PPP leadership to include the word ‘Indian’ is to avoid accusations of ethnic crudeness and ethnic chauvinism.

Even if you dislike the PPP, it does not erase the fact that as a political party, it is sensitive to the ethnic fulcrums of Guyana.

The PPP’s opposition, first the PNC, WPA and AFC are unable to match this PPP’s strong sense of delicately manoeuvring the racial labyrinth.

The PNC, WPA and the AFC have absolutely no sensitivity to Guyana’s ethnic melting pot. These people are so intellectually mediocre that crude racial vocabulary comes naturally to them.

I will use that perennial, racially driven vocabulary to formulate a theory of why every five years, even if the occasion is not election related, Indo-Guyanese face violence

Five years ago, two cousins were found murdered at Cotton Tree in Region Five. The PNC, the Guyana Human Rights Association and the Stabroek News invented the fiction that the boys were killed after the long five-month elections saga in 2020 ended with the PPP’s victory and Indian people killed the two boys out of celebration.

Joseph Harmon and David Granger went up to Cotton Tree and their words were insensitive.

Five years after, in April 2025, Indian people were again beaten over the death by drowning of an 11-year-old girl in Tuschen, East Bank Essequibo, Region Three.

Why were Indians beaten at Cotton Tree and parts of Region Four and Georgetown in April 2025? This is where the Freudian analysis comes in.

Sections of African Guyanese at a deep, Freudian level believes that the parties they support, the PNC, WPA, AFC and other prominent African personalities in civil society and the media that they admire do not like Indian people and see Indian people the way Germans saw the Jews in the 1930s.

Hanna Arendt in her superb philosophical book, “The Banality of Evil,” argued that very ordinary Germans without any politics in their lives killed Jews or welcomed the killing of Jews because they felt it was the right way to feel because their German leaders felt that Jews were the problem in German society.

It is outside the scope of an 800-word newspaper column to expand on this theory, but to advance its validity I will offer current examples to show how the vocabulary of PNC and AFC and WPA leaders and anti-PPP Africans in civil society feed the Freudian anti-Indian psyche of sections of African people.

Could the anger of the two cousins have subsided in Cotton Tree if two high-profile PNC leaders did not go up to Cotton Tree and address African villagers?

Look at the current PNC leader Aubrey Norton. He has alienated some huge Indian figures in the PNC; to name just five — the former PNC treasurer, Fiiaz Mursaline, former Mayor, Ubraj Narine, Geeta Chandan-Edmond, Amna Ali and Supriya Singh.

Norton comes across as anti-Indian through his crude support for anti-Indian sentiments within his party. He absolutely refuses to disassociate himself from the ethnic insanities of David Hinds.

Then there is the WPA. It has become a party hostile to the East Indian race in Guyana. Then there is Nigel Hughes. Hughes has gone so far down the river of ethnic extremism that he is part of the ethnic triumvirate – Hughes, David Hinds and Rickford Burke.

Then there was a post last week from a senior UG official that she sees PNC parliamentarian Amanza Walton-Desir a good move for Guyana. The senior UG official says Walton-Desir embodies the qualities of leadership Guyana needs. The woman chose Walton-Desir over Dr Vindhya Persaud.

Walton-Desir survived calls for her prosecution by the ERC over ant-Indian remarks. Dr Vindhya Persaud has been in power with a portfolio of helping needy people.

She has never uttered even one word that is derogatory of any ethnic group. When instabilities break out and these PNC, WPA, AFC and African civil society Africans are involved, it is obvious that the anti-Indian Freudianism of sections of African people will run amok.

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.