MY daughter visited her parents for three weeks. She had one of the biggest scares of her life when, twice, we stopped at the pedestrian crossing, and drivers ignored my hazard lights and drove through, almost killing the crosser on those two occasions.
My daughter took the licence plate of one of the drivers, sent it to me by email to contact the police, but somehow I didn’t get it.
She sent me an email Sunday night telling me to see a deeply philosophical movie named “Dead Poets Society” because she looked at it on the plane on her return trip and was impressed.
She asked me to see the movie. I replied to say that I saw it before she was born and that the film was introduced to me by former WPA ideologue and former revolutionary Marxist, Nigel Westmaas.
One night the two of us were alone in the WPA office and we discussed at length the message of the film. Nigel was really influenced by this movie. I saw myself in that movie. When I went to teach at the University of Guyana at Berbice, I tried to instill the values that the movie extols.
These include the necessity to avoid conformity to the prevailing thoughts; that you must follow your ideas that you believe can work for you. The huge part in the message of that film is that you must never allow others to think for you.
I was that lecturer in Dead Poets Society when I taught in Berbice. On my farewell, the students dedicated a poem to me with a very moving philosophical tribute. I framed it and it hangs on the wall of my house and is the first thing you see when you enter my home.
I thought of writing this column about Nigel Westmaas and Dead Poets Society because of what Westmaas has become. If there was any teenager in politics that my wife liked it was Westmaas. When I was courting her, Nigel would be with me many times when I was on a rendezvous with her.
I replied to my daughter telling her that once I see a mention of Dead Poets Society movie, I think of Westmaas and how impossible it is to understand Homo sapiens. Do you know Sigmund Freud once wrote that he never understood people despite decades of researching the nature of the mind?
I don’t want to accuse Westmaas of racism because he may want to sue. A few months ago, David Hinds threatened to sue me for calling him a racist. Why pick on me when dozens and dozens of high-profile critics of David have frequently referred to him in such terms?
I will never believe Westmaas, who was so moved by the values the Dead Poets Society preached, could now be the complete opposite of the time when he loved that movie’s message.
Westmaas is anti-Indian. I did not see that in so many WPA people that I spent decades with. Westmaas is now one of the purest exponents of the superiority of the Mulatto/Creole race and he is unashamed in his embrace of race and class in Guyanese sociology. He is regarded by The Usual Suspects (TUS) and the Mulatto/Creole class (MCC) as their darling.
This was a man that in his youthful days was enthralled with revolutionary politics, revolutionary leaders, and Marxist perspectives. Look at his decline today. Westmaas is an apologist for pro-imperialist penetration of the Global South. He was part of a group that wrote President Ali demanding that Guyana stop oil production and switch to cleaner energy which he says the West will finance.
He was very close in the heroic days of Walter Rodney with WPA stalwart, Maurice Odle. Did he read Odle’s autobiography? Perhaps the leading international economist that Guyana produced. Odle describes the West’s switch from colonialism to what he terms the New Imperialism.
Odle describes the cruel ways in which the West stifles the growth of the Global South. It is clear to Odle that our former colonial masters will never stop in their subjugation of the post-colonial world.
This is the same Westmaas that says the West will finance Guyana if we switch to cleaner energy. This man puts his faith in the New Imperialism to provide for Guyana’s future. I remind readers that when he and the MCC and TUS wrote the President, they reminded President Ali that greenhouse effects kill African people. Really! Only African people?
I broke with Westmaas in April 2020 when he refused my request to condemn the attempts at rigging the 2020 elections. I was so stupid not to see all these years who people like Westmaas really were.

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.