Barrington Braithwaite’s attack on Major General, Joe Singh

Feb 11, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – Here are the multi-racial facts about Joe Singh. He is East Indian and is married to an African Guyanese. His son is half-African Guyanese. The major headed one of Guyana’s most essential institutions – the Guyana Defence Force – which consist of 99 percent African Guyanese.
Barrington Braithwaite is an executive member of an African organization – ACDA. He is a Commissioner of the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC). Mr. Braithwaite is married to an African Guyanese. Mr. Braithwaite is a columnist with the Chronicle. Mr. Braithwaite writes in support of the PNC. As far as I am aware, I have never seen a public correspondence from Joe Singh in support of the PPP.
What is my point in the juxtaposition of the facts surrounding the lives of these two men? You have to be naive not to see that of the two, Joe Singh has more multi-racial elements in his experience and in his life than Braithwaite.
Here now is a long quote from Braithwaite’s April 12, 2020 Chronicle column on Joe Singh, “There have been no people on this planet over the past five hundred years like Africans… who have endured demeaning subliminal definitions as colonizing policy of justification…, others have embraced this mechanism towards their own interest with vigour. A great example is the assault declaration by Major General Ret’d Joe Singh against President Granger and the APNU+AFC supporters in Stabroek News, March 19, 2020. Is one such direct transference of guilt by the imposition of public accusation and posture, to bury the facts that an opposition putsch along ethnic lines was launched, that caused injury to many including children, to which he was hypocritically silent about, but his duel personality was evident before, however, I wish to thank Colonel Ret’d Desmond Roberts and other Military officers, and especially the young grounded APNU parliamentarian Jemaine Figueira (sic) for his contribution in unmasking Joe Singh.”
What is disgusting about Braithwaite’s take on Singh is that he quotes two African Guyanese’s condemnation of Singh. So these two African Guyanese are not racially oriented but the East Indian guy is. Singh is guilty of racially derived feelings but not Braithwaite.
But what crime did Singh commit to warrant Braithwaite’s psychoanalysis of him? Singh was part of a majority of people in Guyana and the world who condemned the rigging of the 2020 election. If Braithwaite could pick on Singh for just one act against election rigging, I would like to know how Braithwaite feels about me.
From March 5 when Mingo began to tamper with the Region Four tabulation until August 2, when Dr. Irfaan Ali was sworn in as president, I did a daily column condemning Braithwaite, the Chronicle he writes for, the PNC, the AFC, Claudette Singh, Clairmont Mingo, Keith Lowenfield, the three PNC GECOM commissioners, and supporters of the PNC’s position on the election like UG’s Deputy Vice Chancellor, Dr. Mellissa Ifill; TUC General Secretary, Lincoln Lewis; WPA’s Eusi Kwayana; Stabroek News columnist, Henry Jeffrey; the Guyana Human Rights Association, Transparency-Guyana, ACDA, just to name a few.
Singh’s little letter against election rigging from March to July is a drop in the ocean compared to my oceanic crusade against the names cited above. Let Braithwaite and the other names cited above accuse me of racial instincts as Braithwaite did to Singh. My activism against rigged election was relentless, each day in a five-month period. Let Braithwaite write about my racism.
Here is a prelude to my reply. My sisters, Gwendolyn, Janet and Gloria married African Guyanese men and mothered African Guyanese children. My brother, Harold married an African Guyanese woman and fathered children with her. That is what is called a multi-racial family. Let Braithwaite match those multi-racial horizons.
I don’t care to know who Colonel Desmond Roberts is. I don’t care to know who Jermaine Figueira is. The two cannot match the patriotic contributions of Joe Singh. In condemning attempts to rig elections, he should be respected. My understanding is that Roberts served closely in the army and National Service under President Burnham. I am just asking him whether he knows anything about those days of the activism of Walter Rodney, and what are his views on Rodney’s death. I guess Roberts must know Granger well because they served in the army at the same time when Joe Harmon was chief of intelligence in the GDF. I end with a question for the ERC. Are they going to ask Braithwaite, who is an ERC commissioner, for an explanation on his accusations against Joe Singh? More on the amorphous ERC and Braithwaite’s mistreatment of Charrandass Persaud in forthcoming columns.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)