IF there is one thing I find utterly despicable about a Third World human is their acceptance that the world is divided into democratically elected countries and those that are not, and thus by that comparison, governments that have elections have better leaders and serve the world more usefully than leaders who were not elected.

I really hate humans that lived through imperialist colonial rule and yesterday said, today said and tomorrow will say that Western “democracies” are better than countries like China, Russia, Iran etc.

I was traumatised by how these “free” countries and so-called professional journalism in those “free” countries that we think are better than China and Russia and Iran, literally and barefacedly justified Israeli committing genocide against an unharmed people and actually supported that genocide through continued arms export and trade concessions.

No decent and sane human could have been unmoved when they saw the bodies of dead women clinging to their dead babies all of whom died in their sleep after a midnight Israeli bombing.

Western leaders watch those images and remain unmoved, and we have two former ministers of government – Henry Jeffrey and Asgar Ali and a former UG Chancellor, Bertrand Ramcharran telling the Guyanese nation that Western countries are democratic and China and Russia have dictators.

These three men sprout diseased ignorance and our scholars at our country’s only university remain silent. Later this month, the UG’s Department of Government and International Relations will churn out dozens of graduates at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, as it has been doing for the past 20 years.

I was one of the social scientists at UG that had an input into the founding of that department.

What kind of misplaced, mediocre graduates we taught over those two decades that none of them and none of their lecturers could pen even a one-paragraph comment on the degenerate opinions Jeffrey, Ramcharran and Asgar Ali are offering to the young people of this nation.

Asgar Ali was close to Cheddi Jagan. Ali’s brother, the now deceased president of the Rice Producers Association was a protégé of Cheddi. Both Cheddi and Mrs. Jagan had him as one of their favourites. Cheddi must be turning in his grave on what Asgar Ali wrote about dictators in China and Russia wanting to invade small countries. I became ten years old the year when I saw how Western countries did not like the most popularly elected leader in British Guiana – Cheddi Jagan and overthrew him resulting in the decimation of British Guiana in the 1960s.

How could Asgar Ali, a one-time comrade of Cheddi, write such appalling nonsense? Does this man read, I mean does he know what is going on in the world? Did he ever hear the name Neville Bissember Junior? Mr. Bissember said on the Freddie Kissoon Show that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Guyana’s traditional Western friends refused to donate the COVID vaccine to Guyana. China, Russia and Barbados did. Those three countries rescued us.

There was an interesting disclosure by Mr. Bissember in another edition of the Freddie Kissoon Show when he said he was present at a meeting at the UN with the American Ambassador to the UN, Madeline Albright and some CARICOM ambassadors when Ms. Albright suggested that CARICOM take in Haitian refugees. Instead of the US taking them, Ms. Albright wanted some poor countries in the world to take them. For a man who was Guyana’s Finance Minister under Cheddi Jagan, Mr. Ali is a pretty ignorant gentleman.

The ignorance of Ali knows no limit. Cuba has been one of the pillars of Guyana’s medical sector and that pillar has been in existence from President Forbes Burnham right through to every president right up to Dr. Irfaan Ali. Does Ali know anything about countries he calls dictatorships and how these countries have provided assistance to Third World countries since Independence?

Can Asgar Ali find any member of the ruling ANC party in South Africa that would condemn the USSR as a country that was a dictatorship when it was the USSR that provided a lifeline to the ANC as it battled to overthrow the apartheid regime? Does Ali know that it was Cuba that sent its troops to Angola in 1076 to stop the apartheid regime in South Africa that had sent troops to Angola to prop up Western colonialism?

Can Aagar Ali find even one citizen in Gaza that will support his theory that China and Russia have dictators that want to invade other countries? I hope he never has that conversation because it may result in an assault. I end with a plea. Guyanese must reply to the ignorance of people like Jeffrey, Ali and Ramcharran.

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.