The Freedom to Choose

On race, memory, and the quiet defiance of being Black and unowned in Guyana.

“Expose them! Expose them!”

The words drifted across the morning air like ash, soft, but scorched with meaning. It was April 17, 2023, Nomination Day for the Local Government Elections. I was walking with comrades, friends, strangers who felt like family, all of us dressed in red, moving with the kind of collective hope that, for a moment, makes you believe politics might still be beautiful.

We were laughing. Sweating. Waving. Some held flags. Others carried nothing but tired eyes and full hearts. The streets were alive with rhythm and colour. And yet, those words rose above the joy like a stain.

“Expose them!”

I looked around, uncertain at first. Expose who? We were in the open. Proud. There was nothing to hide. Then I saw him, leaning on a fence, phone in hand, snapping photos. Not of the banners. Not of the crowd.

Of us. The Afro-Guyanese candidates in red.

That’s when it settled in. This wasn’t observation. It was surveillance. Not a record for remembrance. This was a catalogue for condemnation.

Because in the imagination of a certain political class, Black skin belongs only in green.

This is the lie that has lingered too long in Guyana. That Afro-Guyanese who do not vote PNC are not simply mistaken, but treacherous. Corrupted. Bought. That to step outside the lines drawn decades ago is not just a political choice, but a moral failing.

We have been called many things.

In 2021, in the very halls of Parliament, MP Maureen Philadelphia stood over Eon McPherson, an aide to the Speaker, and spat the words “house negro” at him. Not in debate. Not in fury. But with the calm cruelty of someone reminding you where she thinks you belong.

And more recently, Dr. David Hinds, academic, commentator, gatekeeper of a certain brand of racial nationalism, referred to Black PPP supporters like me as “lickbatty Africans.” It should have provoked outrage. And when Aubrey Norton, the Leader of the Opposition, was asked to condemn it, he refused. He smiled. He sidestepped. He moved on.

That silence said everything.

And then came the most paradoxical voice of all.

Nigel Hughes, ExxonMobil’s lead counsel in Guyana, himself an Afro-Guyanese, a man whose career has been defined by access, status, and extraordinary success, stood on a platform in Geneva and declared that Afro-Guyanese are “oppressed daily” in this country.

Oppressed—by whom?

By the government that has built tens of thousands of house lots and counting, many for Black families, young families, single mothers. That has expanded access to credit, put tools and land in the hands of working people, and given thousands of scholarships to Guyanese who would never have seen a university gate otherwise. A government that believes opportunity is not a privilege to be hoarded, but a right to be widened.

Because we remember what came before. We remember when scholarships seemed to circulate only among the children of ministers and their friends. When opportunity was a private inheritance, not a public investment.

And so, yes, call it what you will. But don’t call this oppression.

I’ve been told, more than once, that I must have been bought. That my politics must be the result of some reward or favour. That my presence in red is unnatural. A betrayal.

But no one ever says who sold me.

Because to admit that would be to admit they thought they owned me in the first place.

But I was born free.

My vote is not betrayal. It is choice. My beliefs are not disloyal. They are mine.

I chose the PPP because they showed up. Quietly, consistently, without spectacle. They invested in things that don't make headlines: roads, clinics, classrooms, second chances.

And yes, I know the PPP is not perfect. No party is. But I have seen more hope in the small things they’ve done than in the large things others have promised and failed to deliver again and again.

This is what terrifies the PNC. Not that we have been misled. But that we have seen clearly and chosen anyway.

So they come with cameras. With chants. With slurs. They come to mark us. Shame us. Drag us back into their imagination of who we’re supposed to be.

But I will not go.

I am Guyanese.
I am Afro-Guyanese.
And I am free.

Free not because someone handed it to me.
Free because I refused to give it up.

And no amount of photographs or speeches in Geneva can change that.