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Sep 29, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
In the Stabroek News, there is a weekly column captioned “In the Diaspora” in which guest writers from outside of Guyana, living in the diaspora, pen the columns that are featured. “In the Diaspora” for Monday (yesterday), September 28, went into the circus then into the gutter. The title of the piece is, “Warning Signs: Mike Pompeo goes to Guyana.” It is jointly written by Ryan Jacobson of the University of Chicago and Matthew Quest of University of Arkansas. If there is a warning sign of Pompeo going to Guyana, there is also a warning sign that Jacobson and Quest are bringing the circus to Guyana. It is the first time the diaspora circus will come here. In my lifetime living in Guyana, the circus came from Russia, Mexico, and Colombia.
To see how frightening this warning sign is about the circus coming, we have to quote from these two clowns. They write, “As critical observers, we ask: What is being subverted in the region, national sovereignty or workers’ self-emancipation.”
What is critical about what Jacobson and Quest are observing? Far from being critical, Jacobson and Quest are opportunistic. Here is why. For five months, the integrity of one of the most essential pillars of regional sovereignty, CARICOM, was being undermined by five months of systematic rigging of Guyana’s national elections. Concerned about the destabilizing impact on the CARICOM region, five CARICOM prime ministers travelled to Guyana to preserve Caribbean regional wholesomeness.
And where were Jacobson and Quest during these five months, from March to July? It had to be Timbuktu because Jacobson and Quest were silent either refusing to see how destructive to Caribbean integration election rigging can be in Guyana or maybe were silent because they probably had a choice in the election outcome.
Let’s quote again from the circus, “As the newly elected Guyana President Irfaan Ali and the PPP/C Government held court with Pompeo, adorning the capital city of Georgetown with US flags and billboards, the working people of Guyana were already dealing with the deadly realities and effects of racial violence, following the horrific killings of Isaiah Henry, Joel Henry, Haresh Singh, Prettipaul Hargobin and the protests that stoked fears of widespread civil conflict.”
This is either dishonest scholarship or poor academic research that borders on incompetence. The working people were divided by politicians in Guyana who refused to accept the rule of law and the results of free and fair elections. In their quest to destabilize the wining party, opposition leaders incited villages using the tragedy of two young men whose deaths the police were investigating and there was no evidence of the homicides being a hate crime.
The fears of widespread civil conflict in the early weeks of September were generated by opportunistic politicians whose frenetic obsession with power could have caused a Venezuelan invasion because there is no better time to invade a country as when its population is at war with itself. These sociological realities, Jacobson and Quest ignored but have the asinine temerity to tell Guyanese readers about a warning sign of Pompeo coming here.
The dangerous warning sign resided in what two opposition leaders – former President, David Granger, and his right-hand man, Joe Harmon, did in certain villages in western Berbice. These fears had their genesis in the rigging of the March 2020 elections for five months. Instead of joining with the Vice Chancellor of UWI, the OAS, CARICOM, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the EU, the US, Canada, former Liberian President, Ellen Sirleaf, of the Elders; a body of former Prime Ministers and Presidents that monitor human rights violation around the world founded by Nelson Mandela and other international actors to condemn the internecine election fraud in Guyana, Jacobson and Quest were not to be seen and heard. Of course, they were teaching in Timbuktu when Guyana was going through this horrible period.
Let’s offer one final quote from these two fellows and this is where we move from the circus to the gutter, “The people of Guyana…deserve a direct democracy where the majority can oppose the minority that rules above society….”
So Jacobson and Quest know there is a concept and process that goes under the name of direct democracy. From five months, direct democracy was under the threat of decapitation. The Chief Elections Officer declared six different results on six different occasions. And while the world frowned on this satanic descent into election rigging, Jacobson and Quest were happy teaching their students in Timbuktu. Now they write to tell Guyanese about a warning sign in relation to Pompeo coming here. Stay in Timbuktu, gentlemen!
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
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