THIS output here began three columns ago, the origin of which is a large letter in the Stabroek News (SN) of March 14, 2026 by Nigel Westmaas, one of the more pronounced defenders of the political interests of the Mulatto/Creole class and one of the longest serving members of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA).
Westmaas had a mouthful to say about me, including personal accusations and remarks about my past and present political outlook. Westmaas knew he printed an ocean of criticism of me, so he writes that he expects an eight-part series as a reply. I don’t know if I will do eight or less or more but here is part four and I know there will be a part five.
Westmaas accuses me of being personal in my analysis of my subjects. But this is the very Westmaas in a letter to SN that describes me as an attack dog for the PPP. For the record, unlike Westmaas, I do not belong to any political party. I have absolutely no relationship with the PPP as the ruling party and with the Government of Guyana, even at the thinnest of levels. I am not a paid columnist with the Chronicle. I don’t know, have never seen or talked with a number of Cabinet ministers.
Westmaas in his SN March 14, 2026 missive wrote the following: “His reversal (Kissoon) invites the question of whether there may have always been some prior affinity with the very party (PPP) he once condemned so vehemently.”
I was elated, mentally rampant and emotionally ecstatic when Westmaas insinuated about a secret relationship with the PPP during my days as critic of, and activist against, the PPP.
This particular Westmaas accusation allows me to address the vast young minds who currently fill the population of Guyana. Secondly, they allow me to contribute to my country’s historiography (unlike Westmaas, who left 30 years ago, I have not left and will never leave my country).
Westmaas never fails to broadcast that he has two heroes. The first is Martin Carter who Westmaas thinks is the profoundest thinker Guyana produced, and Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine, who, in fact, was a far deeper thinker than Carter.
So, my question to Westmaas is, does he think his two heroes had secret relationships with other entities just as he thinks I had? Martin Carter is suspected of being an MI6 informant of the UK government while he was inside the PPP leadership in the 1950s. Released British documents from that period revealed that Carter may have been the person MI6 code-named, “Lascar.”
After being expelled from the PPP for being a Stalinist and ultra-communist in 1955 and picketing the Queen’s sister who was on a visit to British Guiana, Carter turned up in 1957 as a high-level employee of the cultural arm of the Colonial Office in British Guiana named the British Council.
From there, he became the chief spokesperson for the British plantocracy – the Booker Empire. From there, he became the Information Minister for the pro-West Burnham Government then went back to the Booker Empire.
When Carter’s usefulness to British intelligence and the British Government was over in the 1980s, his atonement for his sins took a sordid turn. He became a dipsomaniac. The last time I ever saw Carter, at UG where I taught, he was drunk in his office. The last time I ever saw Carter in my life, he was walking on a Regent Street pavement in Bourda drunk out of his wits.
Ravi Dev remarked that during the hippie days in the late sixties, the CIA may have recruited Roopnaraine when he was at Cornell University. There has always been a rumour that someone high up in the WPA was an informer because many secret things the organisation was doing got exposed with tragic consequences. I was working with the Grenadian Government when the American invasion occurred in October 1983. None of us could get out of Grenada but Roopnaraine flew out on a special chartered flight.
Dr. Josh Ramsammy who worked closely with Roopnaraine as founding members of the WPA told me that Roopnaraine had a secret relationship with the PNC. It turned out by accounts of Ravi Dev and later behaviour by Roopnaraine himself that he was always close to the PNC, and he singlehandedly birthed A Partnership for National Unity (APNU). I am begging Westmaas to explain the behavioural patterns of his two heroes.
For the record, while I was actively against the PPP government, I had not even an infinitesimal connection with the PPP. If I did and my ugly secrets made me a recipient of perks, I am still to receive them. If offered them at this late stage of my life, I may take them. Should I?
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.
