GUYANA is not going to see any intellectual exchange between PNC leaders and independent academics. Guyana is not going to see PNC leaders participating in open debate with persons whose politics are not on the same wavelength with them.
What the PNC leaders and the entire school of anti-government preachers will do, way into the far future, is to stay in their comfort zones and sermonise their small group of converts. Look at social media and see if you can identify one social media programme where these anti-government politicians have engaged in open debate.
They are afraid of intellectual exchange and they are running from it. They take refuge in their comfort zones. The result is they appear as jaded, faded mandarins and this and no other factor explains the devastation of the PNC in the 2025 general and regional electionse3ese3e.
The man who is happy to talk political insipidities in his comfort zone is Vincent Alexander. He came on the Freddi Kissoon Show and argued that African Guyanese who joined the PPP suffer from post-slavery syndrome. Alexander reduced the complexities of the human mind to a single factor. So there are no other variables involved when an African Guyanese decides to join the Government of Guyana.
Alexander refused a request to debate James Bond on another edition of the show, since Bond was accused of having post-slavery syndrome. When I asked Alexander why he refused, he said he did not like the comments he saw posted about him on the show. Any schoolboy would know that was an asinine cop out. One enters an arena of debate for three reasons: self-confidence, addressing the public on issues you want to educate them on and the obligation to those who support you to speak to them.
Alexander was in his comfort zone last week. The safety cocoon was David Hinds’ social media programme titled Politics 101. Here is what Alexander said. The upper class of Indo Guyanese has captured the state and has perpetuated domination over Guyana and its resources. He went on to add that although there are ordinary Indians who do not benefit from the upper Indian class, they will not speak out because they see the government as Indian.
Now and forever, Alexander will not defend that unmitigated political miasma in front of an audience in which he is a panellist among independent thinkers and face questions from the audience. Now and forever, Alexander will remain happily ensconced in his comfort zone.
There isn’t any part of that delivery that could stand up to questioning. The rest of this column is an assault on this fake political theory of Alexander. First, you have to explain to your supporters through which route this Indian class came to capture the state. It can be by rigged election, a putsch or a coup d’état. The PPP came into power in 1992 and, except for the election it lost in 2015, has won state power through free and fair elections since 1992, which the world has accepted.
In all those elections, Mr Alexander himself sat in the Elections Commission. If the PPP captured state power, Alexander had to explain how it did that while he sat for 18 years as a GECOM Commissioner. Secondly, Alexander has to explain how this upper Indian class caused itself to be out of power in 2015. If this upper Indian class is a relentless perpetuator of domination, how did it lose in 2015?
Thirdly, how did this upper Indian class secure power again in 2020 when the 2015 government had the following characteristics – President – former head of the army; Vice-President – former chief of army intelligence; former Chief of Police – Minister of citizenship; former head of the army – presidential adviser. We can go on, but that information compels Alexander to explain how the upper Indian class captured the state in 2020. Fourthly, Alexander could be accused of being intellectually poor. He did not read the GECOM elections report for both 2011 and 2015 to see that the very Indian people that he says will not speak up voted for the AFC to bring about a minority PPP government in 2011 and loss of power in 2015.
Fifthly, in a country where Indians are 39 percent, how did the PPP receive 55 percent of the voters cast in 2025? Sixthly, the concept of an upper Indian class that controls the government is a bogus political theory. Seventhly, can Alexander explain why, if the PPP is so bad, why did Africans reject their own party in 2025? What Alexander said last week is the same old story he and his acolytes have been preaching for the past five years. It is insane politics from the people Guyana has left behind.
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.
