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Aug 15, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Freddie Kissoon (FK): Vincent, when five CARICOM Prime Ministers came here to assist in finding a solution to the election impasse, you contacted them and turned an election controversy into a political problem. They rejected your agenda.
Vincent Alexander (VA): Freddie, what nonsense are you talking? An election problem is a political problem; it is not an engineering issue. All election issues are political issues to be resolved.
FK: In the context I am using, you are talking nonsense. Context is everything. You ought to know that. The five PMs came here to see how they can determine the legal results of an election. The picture they saw in front of them was the controversy over counting of ballots. They were not concerned with solutions to Guyana’s sociological dilemmas. If I am invited to Timbuktu to discover where the 10 ballots boxes that were used for voting at the general hospital went, then that is my mandate, not to solve the ethnic complexities of Timbuktu.
VA: You see, it comes back to the political issue. As an Indian you see the election drama as an election thing. As a Blackman, I see it as more than elections that is why I wrote to the five PMs.
FK: Why do you think I am a mental and philosophical East Indian? Genetically I’m Indian but why you think I am psychologically driven by the relentless, conscious awareness that I am Indian? I’m not. People like you, David Hinds, Eusi Kwayana must stop this race thing.
VA: Freddy, leave that old man out of your discussion. Kwayana is 96. He doesn’t need to be dragged into this. This is about you and me. Next question.
FK: I don’t want to talk too much. I want you to get in as much material so my readers could look into your mind because it has been a questionable mind the past five months or so. My next question is a long one. Vincent what was going through your head? You revealed in a letter to the newspaper that when the five CARICOM PMs came here to discuss the election deadlock, you wrote them urging them to see that the election drama is a reflection of a deep ethnic problem and asked for them to go beyond the current election crisis. But you signed the missive as head of the International Decade for People of African Descent (IDPAD) –Guyana committee. Wasn’t that a horrible case of conflict of interest because you are a GECOM commissioner advocating for an election result for APNU+AFC?
VA: I didn’t sign the letter, Eric Philips did. We actually got the five PMs to act on our letter but Kwame McCoy ruined everything.
FK: Can you elaborate?
VA: The five PMs met with a delegation from IDPD, PPP and PNC. During the meeting, Kwame got up from across the table and whispered something in the ear of the PM from Dominica, Hon. Roosevelt Skerrit. There and then the meeting was adjourned and the five PMs requested to see me. They enquired how I could be asking for CARICOM to go beyond the election and initiate dialogue between the PPP and PNC on ethnic power-sharing when I was involved in accepting the Mingo-Lowenfield declaration. They insisted that if I am representing IDPAD, then I could not speak to them while being a GECOM commissioner.
FK: What happened?
VA: Let me finish. I went down to GECOM head office to see the other two PNC commissioners. My decision to quit GECOM would be announced because I had succeeded in CARICOM going beyond the election. Desmond Trotman was at the gate and before I could talk about my resignation, he told me Claudette Singh will vote with them to accept the Mingo-Lowenfield declaration. So my thing with the five CARICOM PMs was over.
FK: But since we know that did not take place you lost out.
VA: Not really. I don’t think the five CARICOM prime ministers would have scrapped the election recount. Kwame had too much influence on them.
FK: Or you mean the people saw through your con. You were asking them to sidestep elections in Guyana, while at the same time you and Desmond Trotman were facilitating the manipulation of the election to ensure there was an ethnic victory of an African party, the type of negativity you told the five PMs that is not good for Guyana. Surely, Vincent, your conspiracy was horrible.
VA: Why you think politics on Guyana isn’t about horrible conspiracies. Anyway, I have to go.
FK: So will you still be drinking every Friday night at the National Service Sport Club on Carifesta Avenue after this election drama?
VA: My drinking is not based on which government is in power.
(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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Apr 19, 2024
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