Kwayana at 96: The runner stumbles
Kaieteur News – A huge gold mine of Guyana’s revisionist history is waiting to be explored. When it will be done depends on Guyanese diaspora scholars. Certainly not in the distant future that we will see AS academics doing. AS will not touch research in contemporary political society in Guyana for a generation to come.
The areas are really interesting. First, the anti-colonial fighters 50 years later did not maintain their earlier obsession with liberation. Cheddi Jagan, Forbes Burnham, Janet Jagan, Ashton Chase, Rory Westmaas, Eusi Kwayana, Martin Carter, Jainarine Singh and others 50 years later did not have the same embodiment of justice and freedom as they were seen by the masses in the forties and the fifties.
Second, the post-colonial bulwark against the Burnhamite dictatorship, outside the PPP, was essentially middle-class agencies that had no ongoing links with the force and so the panegyrics we read about need to be revisited . The Guyana Anti-Discrimination Society, the Liberal Party Against Oppression, the Miles Fitzpatrick / David DeCaires outfit, undoubtedly contributed to the broad spectrum of anti-dictatorship politics but did so from a position of enjoying privilege and vast class. snobbery.
Third, the impetus that created the WPA in the seventies decade until the death of Walter Rodney cried for retrospective treatment. There has been no iconoclastic assessment of WPA although small fragments and fragments that have emerged over the past 40 years are exciting for the researcher.
Three factors need to be investigated. 1- WPA leadership had abusive and abusive relationships with high-ranking leaders in Burnham’s government including Burnham itself. 2 – Leaving a Bohemian middle class that characterized the WPA’s leadership alienated the PPP that regarded it as a demonstration group. 3- With the exception of Rupert Roopnaraine in the book, “Walter Rodney: A Promise of Revolution,” no other major WPA wig has acknowledged the fact that WPA attempted to overthrow Burnham. Rodney’s wife disagrees with that fact. But it’s a fact.
The remaining paragraphs of this article relate to a retrospective note on Eusi Kwayana in light of his last 96 years of birth last Sunday and a unilateral eulogistic analysis of him on his birthday by David Hinds. It is the undisputed opinion of this writer that Mr. Kwayana’s presentation of Guyana historiography is now suspect with strong doubts about its historiography, after his aspect of the rigged attempt in March 2020. This author also believes that he showed in his instinctive racial bias he hid brilliantly from the 1970s until March 2020.
Hinds wrote, “Today is the 96th birthday of Brother Eusi Kwayana and at the age of 96 he is still commenting on political and social developments in his country.” Hinds has stumbled upon himself because, his hero has admitted in his response to the March 2020 election, because he is far away from Guyana (unlike Burnham and Jagan whom Kwayana hates, they spent their lives to all in their homeland) who can’t comment on things here.
Hinds observed, “Kwayana’s career has attracted its fair share of controversy…. But when all is said and done, it emerges as an embodiment of what is virtuous, uplifting, and transformative in political practice. ”Really David! We will have to examine that against his dishonest and racist approach to rigging the March 2020 election.
There will only be space available before we provide evidence of that dishonesty and racist mentality, here’s another questionable quote from Kwayana’s protégé, “I can say without hesitation, if there is a public person in Guyana that comes closest to incorporation political. morality, it is Sage Buxton. ”All that David has written on Kwayana’s seven decades of praxis, Kwayana himself has damaged his legacy. The runner sometimes stumbles and after 70 years of running, Kwayana fell flat on its face in 2020.
Two quick rebuttals. First its dishonesty. As the rigging unfolded, he refused to acknowledge his existence saying he cannot comment because he is far away and lacks the facts. Then without “knowing” the facts, PNC candidate Ganesh Mahipaul quoted him as saying why the spread was on the spreadsheet that Mingo used for tabling Region Four when a spreadsheet was used in Region Three.
Kwayana knew perfectly well that the issue was not the use of a spreadsheet itself but what Mingo was putting on the spreadsheet. In relation to his racism, he chose not to criticize any internationally known Africans in the world and from CARICOM who condemned the rigging with the exception of one – Portuguese Prime Minister St Vincent. Kwayana played the race card as he did all his life.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.)