The masks have fallen off

Dec 16, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – In A Way in the World, the late Nobel Laureate, V.S. Naipaul, narrated an incident when he had just left school and was waiting to travel overseas for studies. The same story had appeared in more detail in another of his books; it may have been a House for Mr. Biswas.
One of Naipaul’s school friends took him to meet his father, who was then a well-known local lawyer, who many felt wanted nothing much to do with his own people, but wanted instead to be White.
We have those types in Guyana who are non-European in ethnicity but behave more European than European. Someone once said it was traditional.
After the courtesies were extended and there was some light but uncomfortable talk, the mask came off. The lawyer blurted out a remark about his race. It was an uncomfortable but highly revealing moment. In that one instance, the mask of colonial respectability fell off and the local lawyer was exposed for what he truly was.
Beneath the façade which he was presenting to the world, as man of cultured European values, lay a grand racial cause. This cause festered at the subterranean level, not shown in public but always there brewing.
In multi-racial societies, ethnic tensions simmer at the subterranean level. People put on their mask, pretending to be above the fray but this is only the face which they present to the public. Below that are different beliefs. And sometimes, it takes just the right trigger for the true self to emerge.
The General and Regional Elections of 2020 was one such trigger locally. The elections saw a number of political activists shedding their political masks. For decades some of these persons had projected themselves as pursing a multi-racial cause.
What you saw is not what was there. They pretended also to be democrats. But when the moment of truth time came for them to take a stand against dictatorship – the very system under which they have suffered in the past and which they had railed against – their masks fell off and they were left exposed as ethnicists.
They showed that what they were less interested in democracy than they were in self-rule. They would have no objections had the elections’ results been different. They were not interested in fair play. They were not concerned about the effects of the rigging on ethnic relations; they were only interested in a particular outcome.
For years, they wanted the people to believe that they were multi-racial and opposed to all forms of ethnic domination. But during the elections, the masks fell off and they were exposed as ethnicists. They had fooled the people for a long time. But the elections brought to the fore their ethnic nationalism.
There is nothing wrong with someone championing his or her own race. But what is detestable is the pretence of having people think you are one thing, having them believe you are multi-racial, when in truth and fact you are an ethnic nationalist and probably always was.
The elections have exposed them. It has revealed to the nation the true character of these persons. They were never interested in power-sharing; they were after power grabbing and were prepared to manipulate ethnic tensions to achieve this goal.
Some of these persons are seeking to remain relevant. They are offering solutions but they are part of the problem. They should be exposed for what they are. They have deceived the people and stand naked as they were born. They have no credibility anymore and should not be taken seriously.
They have never had any solutions to the ethnic problem facing Guyana. And this was because they always saw the problem from their own blinkered perspective, the very one which they tried to hide for decades from the people.
The elections have unmasked them. The young generation can now see them for what they truly are – fraudsters who speak with forked-tongues.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)