MY political life was rich with political struggle so that my political presence in the 2015 election campaign brought votes to the APNU+AFC. I said that to current AFC leader David Patterson when he was Minister of Public Infrastructure.
I don’t care who thinks that is a boast. In that election of 2015, I was friends with people that I forged an anti-imperialist camaraderie with going back to the 1970s, one of whom was Nigel Westmaas, one of my wife’s favourite political activists even up to 2015. I was courting her when I introduced her to him.
From 1970 onwards, I had immense respect for Clive Thomas, Moses Bhagwan, Eusi Kwayana, Maurice Odle (not Rupert Roopnaraine who I always had suspicion of) and many of the intellectual supporters of the anti-imperialist narratives that I was born into.
The election of 2015 came, and my political world went into extensive and endless transformation. The people whom I helped to get into power “passed me like exam.” I remember Attorney-General, Basil Williams at Water Chris Restaurant telling Roopnaraine, the education minister, right in his face; “Ya’ll gat to put Freddie back at UG.” Roopnaraine looked at me as if I was a monkey that came through the window.
After 2015, I saw people that I shared deep camaraderie with became racist, culturally bigoted, politically degenerate, ideologically pro-imperialist, socially snobbish, and neglectful, most disrespectfully, of the sacred philosophical values we shared for over five decades. Five decades equal 50 years. Yes, we shared a political friendship of over 50 years.
It will take several columns to expatiate on each of the politically brutal directions listed above, the AFC, WPA and their educated supporters went into. I will offer just one example. I refer to the pro-imperialist sentiments of people I never believe would support imperialist subjugation of post-colonial societies.
Let me quote what Westmaas said of me: “There are pressing issues that Kissoon might be uncomfortable in addressing lest they eventually place him in a state of intellectual and political crisis.” I am not in any intellectual and/or political crisis. I am in a state of mental abyss because I find it difficult to exorcise the ghost of betrayal that haunts me – betrayal by those whom I find it impossible to believe could openly embrace an imperialist strategy to stultify the future of my country, a future that I thought I would never see in my life time.
Westmaas, Vanda Radzik (with whom I attended the University of Guyana in 1974) and others want the Government of Guyana to stop oil production and in place of the income we get from oil, that money will come from rich, Western countries that will pay us for carbon credits.
I now quote these pro-imperialist thinkers. “Guyana is a carbon sink. Guyana’s forests remove 154 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. Fossil fuel economies desperately need this service. A small payment to Guyana of US$10 per ton would generate US$1.5bn each year and would be much better than oil… we demand payment at the rate of US$80 per ton. We reserve the right to increase our price in the future. US$80 per ton would give Guyana US$12.4 billion every year without the dangers of oil. We cannot support government’s policy to produce oil and gas when it is financially and economically unsustainable and unjustifiable and when Guyana can obtain far greater wealth as a carbon sink.”
Please read that quote again. These people like Westmaas and the rest of the Mulatto/Creole class make me sick. This is an unashamed pro-colonial apology. Guyana scraps a precious commodity that the world needs and instead replaces the resulting income by selling carbon credits to the West, securing a yearly income, with the ability to demand higher payments at its discretion. But who says Western countries will supply that money? They will not.
The very countries that used the World Trade Organization to create unimaginable economic advantages for themselves at the expense of the post-colonial world are the very countries that will now provide for the future of Guyana. One of the great economists that Guyana produced, Maurice Odle, and a top WPA advisor, just published his autobiography in which he shows how the West still treats the Global South as colonies.
So why do Westmaas, Alissa Trotz, Vanda Radzik and her sister, Danuta and 38 others of their ilk want Guyana to get out of oil? The West says that fossil fuel is destructive, so the Global South must come out of it to save Planet Earth. By Planet Earth, they mean Western nations. Let the West save Planet Earth. They have the money to do it. Guyana and the Global South must have its oil money – the very oil money that made the West super-wealthy.
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.
