OP-ED | Stop Playing Mind Games With Afro-Guyanese, Jagdeo!

By An East Indian Who Knows Better

Jagdeo uses Emancipation Day, a day of solemn reflection and Black dignity, to lecture Afro-Guyanese on how they should think, feel, and vote.  It is grotesque.

I say this as someone who has benefited from PPP governance but can no longer stomach the lies. Real unity does not require Afro-Guyanese to submit to PPP rule. It requires shared power, equal opportunity, and mutual respect.

Bharrat Jagdeo does not speak for me. And if you’re East Indian and paying attention, he shouldn’t speak for you either.

Bharrat Jagdeo’s recent statements about race and Afro-Guyanese political alignment are  disingenuous and dangerous. As an East Indian Guyanese who believes in truth, justice, and genuine unity, I feel compelled to call out the cynical manipulation behind his words.

Jagdeo is not preaching unity. He’s playing a game, one he’s mastered, where Afro-Guyanese are pawns and the truth is a casualty.

Let us be clear. Afro-Guyanese who oppose the PPP/C are not motivated by hate or ignorance. They are responding to a history of economic exclusion, extrajudicial killings, land dispossession, and a government that pretends to be colorblind while benefiting one class and one race far more than others.  These same Afro-Guyanese spend billions of dollars each year with East Indian businesses, teach East Indian students, nurse sick East Indians back to health, does this sound like people motivated by hatred or a people standing up for themselves and fighting against PPP oppression?

So when Jagdeo claims that Afro-Guyanese who criticize the PPP are using “racist tactics,” what he is really doing is insulting their intelligence. He’s suggesting they are too blind to see the “progress” he claims his party has delivered, progress that somehow never seems to reach their neighborhoods, schools, or businesses.

It is not Afro-Guyanese who need lectures about unity. African Guyanese constantly demonstrate a willingess to embrace other cultures, sometimes to the detriment of their own. It is Bharrat Jagdeo who needs to be reminded of the PPP’s own role in deepening Guyana’s racial divide. The PPP did not become the party of inclusion overnight. It spent decades solidifying power by weaponizing race, rewarding cronies, and shutting out dissent, including from Indian Guyanese who dared to challenge the party’s orthodoxy.

The idea that young Afro-Guyanese who support the PPP are somehow “brave” while those who oppose it are ignorant or bigoted is both arrogant and condescending. Afro-Guyanese do not owe their loyalty to either party, they owe it to their families, their communities, and their futures. And many have good reason to reject a government that has failed them, regardless of how many Indian or Black faces it parades before the public.

Jagdeo wants us to believe that only the PPP stands for progress. But what progress are we really talking about? Billions in oil revenues with no audit transparency? A culture of fear where whistleblowers and activists are harassed? Young men shot in the back and no justice in sight?  Citizens fired for engaging in the political process as is their democratic right?

If the PPP truly believed in unity, it would not accuse every critic of racism. It would listen. It would reform. It would share power. Instead, Jagdeo uses Emancipation Day, a day of solemn reflection and Black dignity, to lecture Afro-Guyanese on how they should think, feel, and vote.  It is grotesque.

I say this as someone who has benefited from PPP governance but can no longer stomach the lies. Real unity does not require Afro-Guyanese to submit to PPP rule. It requires shared power, equal opportunity, and mutual respect.

Bharrat Jagdeo does not speak for me. And if you’re East Indian and paying attention, he shouldn’t speak for you either.