THIS month I will enter 39 consecutive years as a columnist. I began my career in October 1988. I have written for every major newspaper in Guyana. In a lengthy part of those 38 years, I have been a daily columnist. I don’t know because I haven’t checked to see if CARICOM or in the wider world, I have a counterpart.
As 2026 winds down and as I enter my 39 years in the media, feelings of retirement are following me. There is this impulse to “call it George.” I think I want to, but there are shadows lurking – the President of Guyana and Anil Nandlall. Is this the right time to stop? I believe so, but I am thinking of those two silhouettes mentioned above.
It has been a learning journey, and that knowledge few will have because in those 38 years, I have seen Guyana from every angle, and what I have experienced few will because they have not been in the public eye for nearly six decades. I know the politics, sociology, and culture of this country, which came easily based on what on those six decades.
I have to thank David DeCaires, the founder of Stabroek News, for giving me the break to become a columnist. Then months after, Father Morrison, editor of the Catholic Standard, asked me to do for the Catholic Standard what I was doing for the Stabroek News. Father Morrison, a gentle giant, a man I will always love. I wrote for almost 30 years for the Kaieteur News.
As the paragraphs below unfold, this may be an autobiographical column. I feel the urge to stop in 2027 because I want to do things in my life that I haven’t done and I am in my seventies. Janet Kissoon comes into the picture. I have been married for 47 years, and I firmly believe that in my seventies I should give Janet the long moments I have never given her.

Politics has consumed my entire life and there was hardly any space for Janet. I was in and out of police lock-ups, in and out of legal troubles, in and out of political troubles, and in and out of trouble period! So there wasn’t any time for Janet. After 60 years of swimming in the vortex of controversy, maybe I should come out of the water and dance Barry White’s “Love Theme” with Janet forever. One of the regrets I have in life that haunts me is that I wanted to dance “Love’s Theme” with Janet for all our lives together.
So I am coming into my 39th year of being the crazy, irrational, aggressive, loud-mouthed recidivist that I have always been. I feel the voice telling me to “call it George.” I want to “call it George” but the shadows of President Ali and Anil Nandlall are taller than the skyscrapers man has built around the world.
It may be pompous of me to say I feel I want to protect President Ali. He certainly doesn’t need my protection, but “some say it’s just a part of it, we’re got to fulfill the book (Bob Marley, “Redemption Song”). I feel I have to be there for President Ali in a country torn by the most malignant expressions of hate I have ever seen in my entire life in this country.
I am in my seventies, and I say with bold, tsunamic forcefulness, never in my 60 years of praxis, have I seen political hate as what I have been witnessing since 2020. All through the Burnham years, all through the reign of the PPP from 1992, I have never seen the political culture of Guyana so cancerous, so evil, so mentally warped as I see it in today’s Guyana.
We have anti-government minds in this country that I say from the inner recesses of my heart and soul will side with an invading force because they so hate the PPP government that they will welcome a foreign occupation. I do not pen these words lightly. I repeat them now because I believe in what I write. I say graphically that they are politically psychotic haters in this country that will support a Venezuelan incursion.
That is the extent to which Guyana’s political culture has become psychotic. Should I stop writing in the midst of this relentless evil? This will be one of the factors I will consider as we reach January 2027. I would like to be around when Anil Nandlall becomes the PPP’s presidential candidate. Deep in my heart, I believe Anil is a good man, and deep in my heart, I believe he deserves to be President of Guyana. Maybe I should be around to bat for him. But let’s see how I feel on January 1, 2027.
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.