WHEN I read a 2,700-word tribute of Clive Thomas on achieving 90 years by Nigel Westmaas, I knew something was going on. Westmaas traced Thomas’s political and academic life over a 60-year period and there was not one word, I mean not one word, about the man Clive Thomas, who held formidable state power for five years in the APNU+AFC government of 2015-2020.
For my comments on this academic and political nastiness of Westmaas, see my article of Tuesday, April 28, 2026, titled “Clive Thomas and Nigel Westmaas are political low-lives.” How could someone be so shameless? But Westmaas’ grand omission is a grand scheme of conspiracy to blank out this period in current Guyanese history.
Clive Thomas himself did a weekly column in the Stabroek News for five years (2020-2025) and there was no mention of his time in government in any of those columns. I read all up to the time he stopped because of illness and there wasn’t even a paragraph about his time in government. There wasn’t even a passing sentence. How could someone be so shameless?
David Granger had a programme named “Public Interest” in which he roamed over unlimited issues in Guyana, but there was never a word about his presidency, how he felt about it, the negatives and positives and pitfalls, if any, of his government, the goals set that were achieved and those that weren’t. If you walk the streets of Georgetown from 2020 and keep walking today, every man and woman would like to hear what Granger had/has to say about roads not taken during his presidency. Yet Granger had the temerity to title his podcast, “The Public Interest.” Did Granger ever know what the public was interested in? How could anyone be so shameless?
Alissa Trotz, who believes that Rupert Roopnaraine was the best thing in Guyana after chicken curry or curry chicken, edited a column titled “In the Diaspora” in the Stabroek News for ten years, spanning the period 2020 to March 2026, when the Stabroek News rightfully folded. When she started it, she wrote that the topics would be of interest to the Guyanese diaspora.
There wasn’t one column from August 2020 when the APNU+AFC regime was voted out to March 2026 when Stabroek News ceased to exist on any aspect of the APNU-AFC administration. ‘In The Diaspora’ completely avoided any discussion, however passing or brief, of the five years of APNU+AFC. How could this lady be so shameless?
I have been told that Trotz and Westmaas will be doing a biography of Rupert Roopnaraine. Remember this column when that book is out. There will be absolutely no mention of Roopnaraine’s disgraceful and ignominious time in power. Remember this is the same Westmaas that looked at 60 years of Clive Thomas’ politics but conveniently forgot to mention that from 2015 to 2020 Thomas was the adviser to President Granger and the man in charge of the sugar industry, where 7000 sugar workers were retrenched and had taken Thomas and Granger to court to get their severance pay. The workers won in court.
The same Trotz and Westmaas just finished editing the autobiography of WPA stalwart, Moses Bhagwan. There are no reflections by Bhagwan of the WPA in power between 2015 and 2020 in his autobiography. Of course, expect Bhagwan to say that he wasn’t part of the APNU+AFC government, so why should that be part of his memoir?
From the time APNU+AFC lost power in August 2020, David Hinds has been doing a daily Facebook rampage. But Hinds avoids, like COVID-19, any reference to the five years his party, APNU and his other party, the WPA, have been in power. Hinds not even passing makes any reference to anything whatsoever about APNU in power. Recently, my brother’s friend, Howard Eastman, perhaps the most consistent successful professional boxer Guyana produced, was jailed for 4 years for possession of ganja.
Granger, Joe Harmon and the senior politicians in the PNC would have known about Eastman’s decorated career. But Hinds never explained and will never explain why his government in 2016 refused to pass the marijuana amendment tabled in parliament, which, if it had been passed, Eastman would not have been in jail.
David Patterson, senior Cabinet Minister in the APNU+AFC administration, does a Facebook post almost weekly. Last week, he took time to cuss down the PPP government for not giving state positions to those who crossed over to the PPP. Patterson does not touch the subject of the AFC’s time in power. One man who promised to examine the AFC in power is Nigel Hughes. He hasn’t done it as yet. This gap in Guyanese history has to be filled. The current generation needs to know about it.
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.
