Dear Editor,
I pause in the course of a reply to Dr Randy Persaud to comment on the gross violation of Mr Mark Benschop’s rights.
The fact that I feel compelled to write in support of Mr Benschop, who does not need my support, should signal to the PPP regime where they are with their aggravated thuggery. This has gone beyond the time when WPA had to denounce the PPP for bombarding Mr Dev’s home while he was known to be absent and making insolent remarks about him.
Mr Benschop, in his media capacity went to the home of a presidential adviser or aide, or man about the Secretariat, to take a photo of the house for public information. The journalist might have known that he was touching one of the President’s anointed, who are all above the law.
Mr Frederick Kissoon has for some time been calling the government a dictatorship, much to the annoyance of some who point out that it was elected and therefore cannot be called a dictatorship. Kissoon has gone further and has pointed to fascist behaviour. In his article on the latest assaults on Mr Benschop he is very specific. He wrote,
“I remain the only academic in the region that has classified the Guyana Government as incorporating fascist features in the exercise of power.”
Those who cannot accept that statement either have not paid attention to the practice of fascist regimes and movements, or do not know what happens in Guyana. Regime types like fascism, arise in a certain way, but the means they employ are there in the open for any ruler to employ to secure domination, to stifle expression or protest, to induce fear, to cover up corruption, or to make struggle seem to be a waste of time. To apply these means the elected ruler does not have to go the whole hog. Mr Kissoon’s statement cannot be discredited by any fair person, academic or other. In fact, the roots of fascist tendency already exist in any political party that somehow combines race domination with a pretence of socialism.
I should add that professing socialists and professing democrats, Marxists or whatever have used fascist methods and relied on flaunting the banner to excuse them from attack. It is well known that I have embraced certain patterns of social change. Yet, as I wrote some years ago in Guyana, the test of all babblings about ideology and change is not the manifesto or the anniversary speech but the state of human rights of the citizens.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
