Dear Editor,
HAMILTON Green should be the last person to speak of dictatorship, let alone invoke the horrors of Hitler’s Germany, as he did in a July 5, 2025, letter to the editor published by the Kaieteur News.
Green may think Guyanese have short memories, but his comments in February 2024 at a Burnham Foundation-organised lecture to mark the 101st birth anniversary of PNC founder, Forbes Burnham, are still seared in the minds of most right-thinking Guyanese.
His remarks, at the time, urging the PNCR to “keep rigging [elections] to save us from these devils, these bastards, these demons” (a reference to the PPP/C) were not only appalling, but a direct call to subvert democracy. Green, who was once Prime Minister during Guyana’s darkest years of electoral fraud, proudly reaffirmed his support for a practice that had robbed Guyanese of free and fair elections for decades. I doubt his views have changed much in the last year.
That said, it is rich, even surreal, for the same man who openly glorified the PNC’s long, violent record of election rigging to now decry “dictatorship” under a democratically-elected government.
The historical record is not up for debate. Elections were rigged in 1968, 1973, 1980, and 1985. Green knows this; he helped orchestrate it. And in 2020, his political descendants attempted to do it again, until the PPP/C, the courts, international observers, and the Guyanese people fought it off.
Let us be clear: Green’s language and actions are not those of a defender of democracy. When he said, in February 2024, that the PNCR must “indoctrinate youths” and “begin preparations” to “bring the PPP/C to its senses”, he was not talking about civic education or peaceful protest. These are dog whistles to a political base being told that violence, fraud, and racial division are acceptable tools of political change.
Even more disturbing were his racist undertones. When he claimed, in February 2024, that “the only people who deserve to be ‘pan tap’ are those whose ancestors suffered for centuries”, this was a naked attempt to rewrite Guyana’s multi-ethnic identity into one of exclusion. We rejected this dangerous rhetoric then, and most all Guyanese maintain the same position today.
Green speaks of “decency” and quotes Gibran. But there is no decency in praising election theft. There is no decency in stoking racial supremacy. And there is certainly no decency in attempting to tear down the democratic foundations of our nation while baselessly accusing others.
Guyanese know the difference between criticism and hypocrisy. And Guyanese will not be lectured on democracy by a man who still defends its destruction.
Sincerely,
Alvin Hamilton