DAVID Hinds showed a clip of one of the editions of the Freddie Kissoon Show in which I used the word “jackass” to refer to the people who post comments on Hinds’s social media platform praising Hinds. What he did was to obfuscate the context in which I referred to these people using that term.

Two things first, before I go into the gist of my presentation here. First, I do not see anything unethical about referring to some people as jackasses. It is an acceptable term in public commentary.  Secondly, there are people in the world that deserve that title. One such person is the Guyanese who believed what PNC activist Norman Brown wrote that each time the President shakes the hand of an African Guyanese, he wipes his hand with a special detergent. You have to be a jackass, whether at 16 years or 30 or 40 or 60 to believe such sickening fiction.
Now in what context I used the term jackass in relation to those who praised Hinds? I was explaining to the viewers of a particular edition of the Freddie Kissoon Show that the current crop of African Guyanese leaders are betrayers of Black people.

I gave several examples of how the WPA leaders, when they got into power in 2015, heartlessly betrayed a courageous group of African Guyanese who bore the brunt of Burnham’s violence in the 1970s. I cannot remember which edition of the show I described this situation, but what I will do in this commentary is to repeat what was said on that show.
What I am about to write here is difficult for me, because a human does not go public with the things he did for less endowed friends, but context is everything in life. I will offer the examples in the context of the PNC, WPA, AFC and their African surrogates wanting the support and votes of Black people in the national election coming up.

I start with Mobutu. A fine soldier of the WPA in the 1970s, he would come to my house often for help. His medical operation was three months from the date he saw the doctor. I intervened with the Georgetown Hospital CEO, Mr. Mike Khan, for the operation to be brought up the very next day. Mobutu told me he couldn’t get to see any WPA member that was in government. He died in semi-poverty. The same fate met Ronald Todd, another WPA stalwart.

With my pauperised UG salary, I helped out many of the WPA cadres that I fought with in the 1970s, none of whom was successful in getting to see any WPA big wig in the APNU+AFC government. Godfrey Sage was going blind, and I did what I could do with my little resources for him.  On three occasions, Ali Majid told me that he and Stanley Humphrey from Linden couldn’t secure employment through the WPA after 2015. These were men who made huge sacrifices for the WPA from the 1970s onwards.

All I simply said on that programme is for Black people to question the loyalty of the WPA when it was in power after 2015. I went on to give numerous examples of that betrayal of African Guyanese by the PNC, AFC, and WPA. When you see these acts of betrayal, then you ask Black people how they could vote for any PNC, WPA, or AFC leader in 2025.
Hinds parades himself as a champion of African people, and when you listen to him, you would never believe he was part of the WPA that was in government for five years. So, I refer to the pro-Hinds people who post on Facebook as jackasses that instead of praising Hinds should ask him what the WPA did for Black people for the five years it was in power. It was Freddie Kissoon, with a mediocre salary from UG, that used to help out the helpless WPA cadres that fought for the WPA in the seventies.

Where was David Hinds when the marijuana amendment legislation was dumped by his own government that drafted it? Today, 99 per cent of the youths in jail for possession of marijuana are Africans. When the WPA was in power, it put a tax on horse-drawn carts that mostly affected African youths. When the WPA was in power, government banned used tyres, a policy that mostly affected urban African taxi owners. All leaders in the PNC and AFC and WPA did was to fool African Guyanese, and they have been doing it for decades. In 2025, their slogan is “better must come”.  Why better did not come between 2015 and 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.