I DO not know former President David Granger at all. I know Kit Nascimento, but not in a personal capacity. I have known Vincent Alexander up, close and personal. I have worked for 26 years at UG, and he was there during my UG sojourn.
Personal moments and confidential things we exchanged during our UG journey. Throughout our friendship, I found Vincent to have a more than ordinary analytical mind. Our relation was substantially diluted during the APNU+AFC regime of 2015 to 2020. My daily columns during that period were quotidian fulminations against that government, so there had to be a natural parting of ways. After the 2020 disaster, I don’t think our friendship recovered from its severe damage.
I have wondered for countless years why these three men- Granger, Burnham and Alexander – found Burnham and find Burnham ideologically attractive. I don’t have the answer, and except for Nascimento, I may never know why Granger and Alexander were absorbed and still are with Burnham.
The Granger/Alexander/ Nascimento psychological mystery occupies my academic thinking because of my fascination with the great philosophical mind of the 1930s in Germany – Martin Heidegger. I finally grasped the brilliance of Heidegger’s magnum opus, “Being and Time”, after reading it more than four times. You cannot comprehend the book if you do not have a first-degree background in philosophy. It is a daunting read.
“Being and Time” is a book on philosophy that is simply phenomenal. It is the best philosophy book that explains the purpose of human existence. I will never comprehend the esoteric misadventure of Heidegger. How can such a brilliant mind find something positive in Hitler? Incredibly, Heidegger supported the Nazi Government.
How did that happen? The answer lies in the personal angle with the leader that penetrates your mind because you want the leader to be what you think he should be. Several explanations for Heidegger’s behaviour are that he thought that not Hitler or the Nazi party but the dialectic itself was pushing Germany in the direction of what another great German philosopher – Nietzsche – called the Übermensch.”
I think Granger, Alexander and Nascimento wanted a new life for post-colonial societies and from their personal angle, with Burnham, he agreed to be what they wanted him to be. In the end, Heidegger, Granger, Nascimento and Alexander got from their leaders what they wanted. But all four were psychologically uninterested in holistically knowing Hitler and Burnham. The result is they couldn’t see the fault lines in their leaders.
Before President Irfaan Ali, I had no personal moments of ontological and existential discourse with any of Guyana’s Presidents. I knew Cheddi Jagan for a long time, but there was never even one episode in which I could have used my amateur Freudian training to decipher his philosophical codes. I never had a probing moment with Jagan. I will always regret that I refused Prime Minister Burnham’s invitation to meet with him.
Irfaan Ali is the exception. I have had my personal encounter with President Ali, and through that prism, I think I can now understand how Heidegger, Granger, Nascimento, and Alexander felt when they sought to commit their respective leaders to go far beyond the horizon.
The difference between me and Ali, on the one hand, and Heidegger, Granger, Nascimento and Alexander on the other, is that I was talking to a president who had a far more democratic soul than Hitler and Burnham. There is nothing about Ali to lock away inside your mind because you don’t want to see it. Ali is genuine, visionary and soulful.
Hitler deliberately hid his basic instincts from Heidegger. Burnham did the same when he had taken Granger, Nascimento and Alexander on board. In all sincerity, what is there for Ali to hide from you when you ask him to go beyond the horizon? He has been in power for just five years. When Heidegger embraced Hitler and Granger, Nascimento and Alexander were smitten by Burnham; those two leaders were longer in power and had been engaged in Machiavellian schemes to secure state power.
Ali was democratically elected and has avoided any discernible encroachment on rights, liberties, justice, and the rule of law by the state. In Guyana today, its democracy can be compared to any existing democratic land throughout the world.
It is vulgar scholarship and irredeemable moral turpitude to say that Irfaan Ali has not preserved the democratic substance of Guyana. Just look around at the vicious assaults on democracy by anti-government actors in the media sphere and in political society and they exist in graphic ways without retaliation. I end with the belief that from having the personal angle with President Ali that he is a good man who is far beyond the philosophical boundary.
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.