THE bellicose statements on Guyana by former president of Venezuela, Maduro revealed some nasty minds this country has. The Kaieteur News and the Alliance For Change wrote some vicious things that equated Guyana with the ruling party while commenting on the Venezuelan threat.
These people were psychologically incapable of seeing that the issue of a Venezuelan invasion was totally unrelated to which party was in power in Guyana. These people were willing to criticise their country in the midst of a Venezuelan threat simply because they did not like the ruling party. These were very low moments in the politics of Guyana.
Now we have Mark Benschop and Lincoln Lewis openly saying that Caroline Rodrigues Birkett should not be made Secretary-General of the UN. Throughout their rambling, Benschop and Lewis equated Mrs. Birkett with the PPP saying she served the PPP and is serving the PPP. For Benschop and Lewis, Guyana is the PPP and the PPP is Guyana.
This is the kind of contorted minds the Guyana nationality has produced. It is unadulterated ignorance to say ministers of governments in the world serve their parties and not their country. Political parties are elected by the citizens to serve their countries. Mrs. Birkett has been serving Guyana.
Benschop cites a former African president as a better candidate than Guyana’s. So who did this gentleman serve when he was president – his country or his party? Once elected, a politician is in service to the nation. Why would any Guyanese not want a Guyanese citizen to hold one of the world’s most prestigious and influential positions? How could someone hate their country so much?
Each day, you see how this mindset operates, and the people of Guyana have rejected them because every time they open their mouths, it is about the PPP and never anything else. People have gotten fed up with this requiem for the dead. People like Lewis and Benschop hate Guyana because they hate the government. Could a mind get more sordid than this?
At the last general election in 2025, a total of 195,969 Guyanese did not vote for the PPP. That was a political choice they made. Every citizen has political choices. When those two minutes in the ballot booth are over, you can keep or change your political choice, but there cannot be any changing about how you feel about your country. Your country belongs to you. It gave birth to you. You have a right to protect it just as it protects you.
Love of country makes you want to see Guyanese do good once they leave these shores to represent Guyana. No Guyanese can tell me they do not want Guyanese to be the best students at CXC and CAPE among Caribbean contenders or to be the best graduates at Sir Hugh Wooding Law School, to excel at their courses above others at the universities they are sent to.
It is bizarre what Bensachop and Lewis did. Perhaps even more bizarre is what a lady who used to be a columnist at Stabroek News did. It is a relief that she and Stabroek News are no longer around. Her name was Mosa Telford. Here is what Teleford did just before Stabroek News was about to go out of existence. Some tenth-rate British citizen came here for two days, employed by a certain moneyed opposition party.
This misfit went into Georgetown and filmed garbage at Stabroek Square and other places and said he encountered rude Guyanese. I saw his video, which he titled, “Nobody Visits This country.” In one shot, he saw a homeless man and urged his partner to get out of the way before the homeless man attacked them.
For just two days, this tenth rate European man was in Guyana, paid to badmouth Guyana and how did he do it – by showing piles of garbage and overgrown bushes. Ms. Telford did her column and gave it the exact title of the video. Either Ms. Telford has to be the world’s most unintelligent woman, in that she did not know that in a majority of world’s richest nations, what she saw on that video exists in uglier forms. Homeless people roam the cities of the West.
Ms. Telford echoed the cheap sentiments about a man from a foreign land who chose not to display the garbage in his own country and other European countries he visited. He was racist enough to say that nobody visits Guyana and a local fool fell for his nasty propaganda and highlighted it. And Ms. Telford’s editor allowed such a nasty thing to go in print. Ms. Telford is gone, Stabroek News is gone. But beautiful Guyana is getting more beautiful.
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.
