AN exclamation last Saturday night at Ithaca by Aubrey Norton during a PNC’s election 2025 campaign and an intonation by David Hinds on July 15 about African Guyanese, have demonstrated beyond any doubt that these men are ignominious failures in politics.

First, Norton’s exclamation. When I read what Norton said about Azruddin’s WIN party, I think of the dullards that keep praising Mr. Burnham as a phenomenal political success when in fact, Walter Rodney literally assigned President Burnham to the vortex of political desperation and eventually destroyed Burnham psychologically.
Norton told the meeting that WIN is targeting PNC supporters: “Mohamed is more in our constituency than any other one.”

This is a hugely important admission by Norton that has to weaken the credibility of Norton. At the moment, except for Gail Teixeira, no one in active politics has more experience than Norton.
Why then would Mohamed target PNC constituencies? Mohamed’s first reaction on entering politics should have been trepidation about Norton, the Leviathan of the PNC, the man who has an iron grip on the PNC firm. Any political analyst living in Guyana has to offer an interpretation of why Mohamed is doing so. The answer does not involve any complex explanation.
Mohamed knows that the PNC is living a precarious life with its physiology badly damaged through the exodus of its top talent. Mohamed believes that Norton is vulnerable and he has moved in for the kill. Mohamed does not bother the PPP constituencies.

In fact, the more Norton denounces Mohamed for embracing PNC supporters, the more Indians frown upon Mohamed because they see him as an alternative to the PNC and a party active among African folks.

Guyanese have to be the most blinded nation on Planet Earth not to see the elements in the middle class and working class and lumpen proletariat that have gravitated to WIN are African Guyanese.

Norton has decided to dirty Mohamed. He told the Ithaca people that Mohamed is a front for the PPP. Such bad-mouthing has come too late. Norton is set to become a victim of Azruddin Mohamed.

Now the intonation of David Hinds. Speaking on July 15 on his nightly social media programme, Hinds concluded the Africans who are attached to WIN escaped his campaign of the need for Black consciousness to be maintained and widened. But why those who sought association or affiliation with WIN were the only ones who missed Hinds’ fast moving ethnic advocacy?
But why should Hinds assume that a substantial number of Guyanese apart from those who went into WIN, are still accepting his consciousness platform? Could it be argued that Hinds’ original bandwagon of ethnic loyalty never caught on and that Africans do not buy Hinds’ ethnic themes because they find them extremists and racially uninspiring?

It is not that Hinds is an occasional preacher of ethnic loyalty; he has been doing so for five years now. Yet his own daughter did not go with Norton, did not go with Nigel Hughes, did not go with Walton-Desir but with Mohamed. What we have playing out here is one of the greatest paradoxes in politics anywhere in the world at the moment. It goes like this.
If you put Rickford Burke, Tacuma Ogunseye and David Hinds on separate occasions to address Sophia residents at a street corner meeting, then the next night you put Mohamed, he will get more attendees than these three men who are forever appealing to African Guyanese.

Mohamed released videos of his campaign meeting in Sophia last week and the gathering is something that not in 50 years Burke, Ogunseye and Hinds will get.
In fact, Hinds, Ogunseye and Kidackie Amsterdam, have been holding 2025 campaign meetings and in the video that they released, the cameras never pan on the crowd. Don’t take my word for it, go to Facebook and look at them.

The only images you see are the speakers. African Guyanese have no time for the remnants of the WPA. No one in the African community knows Tacuma Ogunseye and African Guyanese think Hinds is not a good representation of Black people.

And so, in the next three weeks, it will be interesting to see how Aubrey Norton and Hinds function. Norton is in a predicament. If he continues to admit that WIN is targeting traditional African areas, he will continue to lose credibility and endure embarrassment. But he has to keep firing salvos at Mohamed because he is leaking votes to Mohamed.

As for Hinds, he has three weeks left to instill consciousness in African Guyanese. But he has been doing that for five years. If he didn’t succeed in five years why would he in three weeks? Norton and Hinds are the collateral damage of Azruddin Mohamed.

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.