I AM still reeling from anger over what Kian Jabour said about accountability in Western countries. I wouldn’t have minded if an uneducated person who reads nothing about the world had said that. But I believe Jabour went to college and is a businessman. He ought to know better, thus, his ignorance is malignant.
But if you think Jabour is a silly man, there is Henry Jeffrey, who is 40 years older than Jabour and was a lecturer at the University of Guyana. Jeffrey is a display of unadulterated ignorance of the colonial mind. He wrote that in Guyana and Africa there is a democratic outlay comparable to that in the Western world.
Jabour and Jeffrey are in the company of Stabroek News (SN), which recently wrote, “This is an election year. More advanced democracies recognise the need for a level playing field and to circumscribe the natural inclination of the governing party to go into overdrive.”
Jabour, Jeffrey and SN are pathetic examples of a psychological theory about colonial effects on non-White people. The theory argues that the most dangerous aspect of colonial domination wasn’t the extraction of resources but rather the damage done to the psyche of the colonial subject.
For me, the best elaboration of this theory is by the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said. With due respect to Frantz Fanon and C.L.R. James, both of the West Indies, I find Said’s analysis offers more subtle philosophical variations on the theme of colonial psychological subjugation than Fanon and CLR. But Fanon will remain one of the minds I will always deeply respect.
There is no accountability in Western countries that Jabour, Jeffrey, and SN believe. We accept that there is only because they have brainwashed us into believing they practise it. Post-colonial societies don’t have it; therefore, we must look up to them for their political and bureaucratic systems are supposedly superior to ours.
But where is the accountability in Switzerland, a country whose entire financial existence is built on income from global rogue money? The West tolerates Switzerland’s rogue status because it is White.
Blood money from Third World dictators is in the Western banks. Properties worth trillions of dollars, acquired by dictators, are located in Western capitals. The new money launderers come from the Asian countries of the former USSR. The dictators of Azerbaijan have their money in Western capitals. So where is this accountability in the very Western system that insists former colonies must embody democratic values? Do you know that Tony Blair, the former UK Prime Minister, was a consultant to the autocratic Azerbaijani government?

The hypocrisy of the West is on display at the moment, and it involves one of the most known personalities in the US, a Black woman named Candace Owens. This is a lady that speaks her mind and does not hold back. A few days ago, President Macron of France sued Owens for libel by the assertion of Owens that Macron’s wife is genetically a man.
Owens has insisted that both Macron and his wife might have violated French laws because she (while being his teacher) allegedly had an affair with Macron when he was 14.
The French president and his wife insisted that Macron was 15 at the time, which is the age of consent in France. She was 24 years his senior. The matter ended there and there was no global rejection of the Macron’s explanation.
Just stop and think if an Asian or African leader was reported to have an affair at 14 with his teacher, what the Western media would have done with that information. It would not have gone away.
It would have stayed with that leader for the rest of his life. The French said Macron was 15 at the time and that was the end of that. Not so in the Third World, the Western media would not have accepted that explanation because they disrespect Third World leaders and believe that the post-colonial world is inferior to the West.
Ms. Owens is not someone to be easily intimidated. She said she will fight the case. And she will bring up the 14-year-old thing as against the 15-year-old explanation when the case reaches the court.
One suspects that the Macrons are not familiar with the American legal system. Ms. Owen is going to have her lawyers go after both Macron and his wife in very brutal ways. They will have to testify and answer some heavy-hitting questions many of which the world may find salacious. Maybe the Macrons just want to shut Owen up. I doubt the Macrons will testify in the US about an identical libel that they lost in France itself. Ms. Owens will have the last laugh.

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.