THIS is the final installation in a three-part series on the debate between Kit Nascimento and the Stabroek News (SN). The SN made a huge noise about Mr. Nascimento’s ministerial role in the Forbes Burnham Government after Mr. Nascimento criticised the politicised, pro-opposition direction of SN.

I wrote recently that a senior journalist told me in the National Park that the PNC is ineffective and that SN plays a far greater role as an opposition party than the PNC. My argument here is that in 2025 we have to judge people as to where they stand in relation to democratic functionalism in the Guyanese state.
SN would prefer if we judge people by their past activism. If we do, then dynamism as a factor in human behaviour does not exist. Nascimento’s tenure in the Burnham Government is recorded history.

What has happened to Nascimento since the time he was a PNC minister? To answer that question we have to ascertain what Nascimento in the present juncture of Guyana is doing.
To judge Nascimento, SN, and people who have had their past activism recorded, we have to use the context of the March 2020 election. That event constituted one of the most seminal moments not only in the history of British Guiana but in Guyana itself. The period in 2020 from March to July is a watershed epoch in the life of Guyana including British Guiana.
In that period, Guyana was close to the abyss of permanent power. We have to judge the totality of the nation as to where they stood in relation to the emergence of permanent power in 2020. A tragic irony was playing out during those five months.

It was an irony involving Nascimento on the one hand, who once stood with Burnham and on the other hand, the WPA, the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA), and certain civil society organisations that stood against Burnham.

In 2020, the irony was playing out on a canvas larger that Guyana itself. There were the WPA in the form of Clive Thomas, Rupert Roopnaraine, Tacuma Ogunseye, David Hinds, the GHRA, the Stabroek News, Red Thread, certain civil society entities that reversed roles with Nascimento.

From March to July, Nascimento was energetically active for a man in his late eighties in the national endeavour to stop election rigging and prevent the return of permanent power. Why are those coruscating, democratic passions of Nascimento being washed away because he was a part of the Burnham Government?
Why are the anti-democratic instinct of Thomas, Roopnarine, Red Thread, Stabroek News, the GHRA being obfuscated in any discussion of democracy in Guyana today? Why should there not be a juxtaposition with Nascimento’s role between March to July 2020 and those names referred to above?

Let’s quote SN: “In an environment where the government and the multitudes of its sycophants seek to attack those in civil society who are performing a vital role in trying to ensure accountability and the rule of law.”

That quote is one of the ugliest vulgarisations of politics I have seen in my entire life as a practicing academic. First, why are intellectual supporters of the government who criticise the hypocrisy of civil society being described as sycophants? In one of Mr. Ralph Ramkarran’s Stabroek News columns, he took civil society to task for concentrating only on nation subjects that have sex appeal (his words).

Is Mr. Ramkarran a PPP sycophant? Secondly, if there is no accountability and rule of law in Guyana, then please name one or more than one specific nation where there is accountability and the rule of law, and when those countries are named let’s do the juxtaposition with Guyana.
Thirdly, why must Guyanese remain silent when in one of its most tragic moments, civil society (minus the Bar Association and the Private Sector) was degenerate in its collective character in either silence on the 2020 election rigging or supported it.

One of the civil society entities which carried questionable pieces during attempts to change the legitimate results is the SN itself. In the second part of this series, I referred to three SN columnists that were writing in support of the conspiracy and in that article, I urged readers not to take my word for it but Google SN between the months of March to July in 2020.

It is five years now that government leaders have chastised the GHRA and Transparency International – Guyana Chapter for being terribly silent on the 2020 rigging attempts. But there has been no rebuttal by these groups with evidence to prove the government wrong. To conclude; Nascimento today stands on the side of democracy.

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.