You cannot hoodwink and bamboozled conscious black people

We all saw through his emperors cloth on his recent visit to the community of Buxton with his deliberate dishonesty, his convenient truth and selective use of words to the gathering. We are not fools, we see you very transparently.

Editor, there is something profoundly troubling when political rhetoric enters an African-Guyanese community and appears calculated to transform the painful historical experiences of African people into an instrument of contemporary political persuasion and opportunism.

African Guyanese are not political props. Our history is not campaign material, or to score cheap political points. Our ancestors’ suffering is not rhetorical currency to be withdrawn whenever a politician needs applause, sympathy, support or votes.

The language employed by political leaders matters, truth and context matters equally. Words spoken before one audience may acquire an entirely different significance when deliberately spoken before another. When a politician enters a predominantly African community and invokes themes touching slavery, oppression, racial suffering, dispossession or historical injustice, those references carry enormous emotional and historical weight.

Such language therefore demands responsibility, intellectual honesty and historical accuracy.

The African experience in Guyana was forged through centuries of enslavement, resistance, emancipation, village-building and an extraordinary struggle for economic and political independence.

After Emancipation, formerly enslaved Africans pooled their limited resources to purchase villages and establish communities that became foundations of Guyana’s social and economic development.

That history deserves reverence not political opportunism.

No leader should presume that invoking the historical wounds of African people or having a hidden and secretive ethnic connection automatically entitles him to their political confidence. Nor should historical suffering be selectively reconstructed to manufacture a convenient political narrative.

There is an even deeper contradiction whenever rhetoric of this nature comes from political leadership that simultaneously professes national unity.

Unity cannot mean transcending race when convenient and only in certain communities nor does resurrecting racial grievance when politically useful.

A politician cannot credibly ask Guyanese to abandon ethnic politics while simultaneously employing language that risks stimulating precisely the historical sensitivities he claims he wants the country to overcome.

That is not transformational politics. It is the oldest political technique dressed in new clothing.

Indeed, Mohamed’s political rise has itself been associated with claims that he could disrupt Guyana’s historically racialised voting patterns which evidence show is changing. Commentary following the 2025 elections noted that WIN made significant inroads into the traditional African-Guyanese political constituency, while Mohamed publicly presented his movement as one capable of bringing Guyanese together across ethnic boundaries.

That makes responsible rhetoric and being honest even more important.

African Guyanese and indeed every ethnic community in this country deserve something considerably more substantive than emotional appeals.

The opposition leader needs to tell the communities what his economic programme is.

Explain how employment will be created.

Explain his plans for education, housing, healthcare, entrepreneurship and community development.

Explain how he will fight corruption and prevent crimes including the types he has been called by the US government to answer to, hence his extradition battle.

He must explain how the national wealth will be distributed sustainably.

Explain your policies and allow citizens to interrogate them.

The government is certainly doing what it promised to do for the Guyanese people in its manifesto and much more.

But Mr Mohammed, should not mistake historical memory for political vulnerability.

And certainly do not mistake dissatisfaction with traditional political parties for an absence of political intelligence.

The people listening today are not the people of several decades ago. They possess smartphones, have access to information, they have lived experiences and possesses the ability to compare yesterday’s statements and doings with today’s speeches and actions. The “truth” you and other leaders speak can be fact checked in real time and your actions past and present can and will be evaluated.

Editor,that is what is healthy for democracy,

this standard must also be apply universally.

I have argued and posited repeatedly, that no political party owns African Guyanese or any ethnic group. By precisely the same principle, neither does any new political movement acquire ownership of them simply because it successfully attracted some of their votes.

Citizens are not inherited political property.

They must be persuaded by performance, policies, integrity, honesty, vision and ideas.

This is particularly important in Guyana because racial politics has already extracted too heavy a price from our national development.

Responsible leaders should therefore be dismantling ethnic political manipulation, not discovering more sophisticated ways of practising it.

It is important to note, entering one’s community carries a responsibility to respect its people and its history rather than exploiting it.

A responsibility to be honest and not seek the berate and insult the intelligence of the people who provided you with an audience.

You must get is right soon or very shortly.

Pump some respect on the truth.

Yours respectfully,

Jermaine Figueira