The Black woman who couldn’t blackmail – Kaieteur News

Guyana in 2020: The Black woman who could not demonize her


Kaieteur News – EU, Canada, UK and US ambassadors came in for extraordinary abuse from those who supported the five-month rigging attempt at last year’s election. From the time those diplomats denied what they saw Mingo doing on March 4, the criticism of them has been relentlessly beyond August 2 swearing at Dr. Irfaan Ali as president.
The 2020 question in Guyana that had a prominent presence was why were the election riggers insulting CARICOM leaders who were equally condemning what was happening? Here is the answer. It was easy to target the three white Ambassadors from Canada, the EU and the USA respectively.
In a former colony of White domination, it was politically profitable to play on the African Guyanese psyche. Also it was easy to also choose the Canadian High Commissioner because she is Indian. Capital was to be gained by suggesting that it was racist in the context of Guyana’s electoral contest.
The white stratagem failed. Those rigging the election had to fail because they were reaching for Forbes Burnham’s strategies whose moment of grand display was long gone. There were no reflections from election riggers that 2020 was not like 1973 when Burnham handled that year’s national election. There was no moment of reflection by the election riggers that whipping hysteria among the masses by denying the Whiteman for interference was a thing of the past, a long past in the past.
It was easy for Burnham to tell African constituencies that the White imperialist was coming again. The generation that listened to it was born into an age of colonialism. They saw the Whiteman snobbery on the sugar estates and in the bauxite communities. In 2020, over 70 percent of the population had no direct experience with that kind of racial contempt. They had no direct contact with their colonial masters.
As every week rolled around, the White stratagem didn’t work. People from African constituencies were not shouting down “the White imperialist.” Each night, talk show hosts who were supportive of the PNC personally insulted the American Ambassador and the British High Commissioner, but the poison failed to spread.
Next the PNC went in the direction of the past – copying from Burnham. The PNC hired an American public relations firm to persuade the American political establishment that if the PPP took office, the Chinese and the Russians would control the government. The dossier produced by President Granger’s relative, Michael Granger, was to be circulated to American law-makers full of Cold War banalities. But 2020 was the year and such stratagems were outdated for a long time.
Enter Mia Mottely. Despite the well-deserved praise that diplomats from the ABCEU countries received for preserving democracy in Guyana last year, the Prime Minister of Barbadia played a vital role at a critical time. It must be categorized as those ABCEU missionaries who rescued Guyana.
Mottley broke the CARICOM for the first time for Granger. In what can only be described as one of the most fraudulent episodes in Guyanese politics, Granger announced that he had invited Mottley as chairman of CARICOM to organize a recount. That’s not the truth. It’s sordid fiction. After agreeing to the recount, Granger won Mottley’s wrath when he tried to undermine CARICOM’s effort by asking the court through a lender to cancel the recount.
Keith Rowley from Trinidad was lively and washed his hand from Guyana. But Mottley was not ready to let Granger escape with his deception. The dead were cast. Once he agreed, Mottley knew that was the opening she wanted. She was not going to get frustrated and give up on Guyana. Mottley knew the rigging was vast and the world was watching and she wasn’t going to pull CARICOM out of the picture.
The PNC hierarchy knew that Mottley proceeded with the recount in one form or another regardless of the Court of Appeal ruling. But they did not demonize it as they did with the ABCEU country ambassadors. If they had embarked on that foolish direction they knew they would have destroyed their cause. She was a Black Prime Minister and a woman. His scandal would have alienated a significant number of Black Guyanese. This explains why the PNC, AFC and their deputies never attacked Africa’s leading personalities. The list included former Liberian president Ellen Sirleaf, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and Professor Hilary Beckles, Head of the Caribbean Redress Committee. Mottley deserves unlimited Guyanese respect.

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



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