I DIDN’T know I would have been called upon to make a presentation last Thursday evening at the Night of Reflection for my friend, Michael Khan, the late CEO of the Georgetown Hospital. In my presentation, I asked the audience to emulate Mike in terms of accepting people for who they are, even if their politics and beliefs differ from yours.
Mike, as you would know, was a victim of that flaw in the Guyanese make-up. He escaped rebuke from the forensic audit of the Georgetown Hospital that was done by the new APNU+AFC government; yet he was fired because the new government saw him as a PPP person. This is the fatal flaw in the Guyanese character, and it will continue to haunt the Guyanese society if we continue to let it exist in us.
I write about this because there were things I saw in Guyana in 2025 that are solid evidence that this deadly flaw is alive and entrenched. I was livid last year when I read a weekly Stabroek News column by a lawyer named Chevy Devonish. He dealt with the improper procedure of random stop by traffic cops and quoted from a statement he saw Christopher Ram made about the issue.
Mr Devonish couldn’t bring himself to quote me. I criticised the random-stop thing for over 10 years in columns in both Kaieteur News and the Chronicle. But Mr Devonish did not want to mention me. This psychological lacuna in Guyanese permeated the society last year and it showed its ugliness in dangerous ways.
People used politics in preference to country. Last year, the AFC descended to the level of sickness when it played into the hands of the then President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro. The AFC noted that when the Venezuelans enter, the ruling politicians have safe sanctuary abroad and that it would be the ordinary Guyanese that would suffer.
This was ironic of course. Some of the big names in the AFC have larger safe houses and hideouts in other countries than many members of the Cabinet, a majority of which have no safe houses abroad.
I remember my country last year when another opposition party, the PNC, walked out of Parliament when the debate was on Venezuela. It was an unforgivable act when your country was facing an invasion. And the Guyanese people did not forgive them. I remember my country very well last year in what it did to the PNC and AFC for their unpatriotic politics.
2025 killed off the AFC and rightfully so. It could only muster 3,600 votes in the 2025 national election; very far from the threshold that is required to gain a seat. It is only a completely stupid person who believes in the rebirth of the AFC.
In music, there is something called one-hit wonder. This is about a group that made a phenomenally popular song the world liked then it simply disappeared from the radar, never to be seen or heard of again. The AFC is Guyana’s one-hit wonder.
I will remember 2025 for a long time because it almost wiped out the PNC. The big, famous, powerful PNC since 1957 almost lost its life in 2025. Its supporters that stood with it since 1957 rejected it last year and that was the beginning of the end. The journey will be completed in 2030 when a new kid will arise and replace the PNC. Strangely in 2025, no one drew a cartoon of the AFC with its epitaph.
I remember 2025 for what was revealed of someone whose political contribution I admired for decades and someone with whom I shared a learning camaraderie, Clive Thomas. He was quoted last year of betraying the socialist politics and Marxist philosophy I admired him for. He went straight into the valley of sordid ethnic sermonising.
Here is what he said last year at a WPA executive meeting which Tacuma Ogunseye made public in the belief that he was paying an act of homage to Thomas. In fact, he destroyed Thomas’ credibility forever.
I now quote Ogunseye (which I first did on this page last year): “Professor Clive Thomas reminded us at the last WPA executive meeting, that once the youth of a people buy into selling/trading their votes for political, economic and social favours, people are lost. The meaning and value of the vote are gone forever – and impossible to retrieve.”
Thomas’ ethnic pandering pre-dates the birth of WIN, so he was referring to the African people of Guyana who developed a working relationship with the government in which they received resources that they were entitled to as Guyanese. Sadly, this was what Thomas became in 2025. Once more in my columnist career, I end with Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
“Oh judgement!
Thou art fled to brutish beasts
And men have lost their reason.”
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.
