Hakeem Jeffries is a very smart fella. Coming out of an African American family from the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, he’d have had to come into contact with many African West Indians – including Guyanese immigrants – who also ended up there. Unfortunately, he hasn’t come into contact with the Indian Guyanese community who ended up over in Queens – where Congressman Gregory Meekes represents many of them.
This lack of familiarity with the Guyanese mosaic became evident when, a couple of years ago, he followed a rabid African Guyanese race-baiting follower of the PNC during the latter party’s attempted rigging of the 2020 elections. He allowed himself to be persuaded by his partisan friend as he addressed a rally against the PPP Guyana Government, and not only denounced them, but also the Ambassador of his country – and called for her removal.
Now, in American foreign policy affairs, this is never done” when it comes to “foreigners” it’s always “America first”!! So, even though the Ambassador had been appointed by the Republican Trump Administration, she was an AMERICAN Ambassador – and not a political appointee, but a career Diplomat at that!!!! One who’d headed the USAID program for Latin America even during the Obama Democratic regime!! So, basically, Jeffries had put his foot into his mouth!!
And this is what President Ali tried to extricate when he encountered Jeffries on the sidelines of the recent Caricom meet. Jeffries – the House Democratic Leader – had come down with a delegation, mostly from the Black Congressional Caucus, to show solidarity with the Caricom leaders. He’d dodged Pres Ali, who had requested to meet him in NYC or Washington to explain the Guyanese reality – but, in T&T, he could neither run nor hide!!
As President Ali said in an interview as to what the interaction with Jeffries was all about – in the wake of US Secretary of State Blinken’s visit to Guyana: “I sought to educate Congressman Jeffries about Guyana and about the narrative that may have misled him, so I was happy that I had the opportunity to meet him and to once again invite him to a meeting, and to seek any concerns he would have had and to educate him on Guyana; and not myself alone, I was happy that other leaders were there.”
So there are witnesses to Pres Ali’s invitation to further educate Jeffries – witnesses who’re leaders of a block of 15 nations that the US is courting!! Guyana doesn’t only have oil, but is on the UN Security Council. The US gonna be looking to us to represent the local sentiments on the intervention in Haiti they seek.
Let’s see if Jeffries will put his friendship about his country!!
…the AFC
Khemraj Ramjattan is now the sole leader of the AFC. Your Eyewitness wonders what’s the status of their claim to “multi-racial” leadership – which was their raison d’etre! – with the departure of Rafael Trotman? Trotman, of course, represented “Mixed” Guyanese, so the AFC’s multi-racial credentials were always suspect, since the second largest block of voters – African Guyanese – weren’t represented in the top tier. The third leg of the leadership stool was Sheila Holder, who was also “Mixed”!! So, is the AFC still “multi-racial” with only Ramjattan as leader??
Anyhow, Ramjattan now wants post-election coalitions to become possible through constitutional change to remove the present stipulation that had forced the AFC to coalesce with the PNC before the 2015 elections. Now that his party has become the “Dead Meat” he’d predicted if he went that route, he clearly wants to go to Indian Guyanese in the 2025 elections and tell them – with a straight face – that he’d support EITHER the PPP or PNC!!
He thinks folks are dumb!!
…our little darlings
Your Eyewitness just saw the results of the NGSA. And once again, he worries about the effect of creating labels for children aged 11-12 that will accompany them for the rest of their lives.
So sad.
