I appreciate the decision of this newspaper to make available its normal editorial space to accommodate my "Viewpoint" on Kwayana's pamphlet: "Cowards, stop unfair attacks on innocent persons!”

My own relationship with Kwayana goes back a very long way and I am on record as equating him, to the disagreement and distress of some, with the late President Cheddi Jagan, as men of the highest possible integrity, even though I have had cause to disagree with both, and them with me, on some issues.

I also know something of the overhanging bitterness, some related to electioneering campaigns, between him and some leading elements of the governing People's Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C). The personal attacks on Janet Jagan, for example, do credit to no one, of whichever party in Guyana. But I think it would be unfair to lay this at the feet of Kwayana.

My files on Guyana's depressing, divisive race-oriented politics -- a problem that also plagues neighbouring multi-ethnic CARICOM states like Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago -- include reports of Kwayana's lone and heroic vigil outside what was then 'Government House' on Carmichael Street, during the fratricidal war of the 1960s.

Other media reports, including a "name-change" controversy, would include the opportunistic move to force him out of the People's National Congress (PNC).

He was later to be ridiculed in a cartoon in that party's newspaper, "New Nation" -- today a pale and pathetic shadow of what was published while Forbes Burnham lived -- along with Cheddi Jagan riding a "jackass".

It was part of a frustrated campaign to show collusion against "us". Read that "us" by the PNC's '"newspaper" for what it would have meant then by a party desperate to assume the reins of power.

Kwayana may not have been as circumspect as Cheddi Jagan in avoiding personal attacks on individuals, something that leading elements of the PNC had made -- some still do -- a virtue. But I have always felt that it was unfair, if not exactly slanderous, to accuse him, of being "racist", even after his launch of ASCRIA. His subsequent and much ridiculed campaign on the East Coast for "land" for villagers transcended race. I covered that campaign.

The "racism" charge against him may not be as venomous as the notorious slander against Cheddi Jagan on the much exploited "apanjaat" controversy. But for me, years later and with a lot of the nasty water having flowed under the bridge of race politics in Guyana, it remains a falsehood and a slander to treat Eusi Kwayana as a "racist".

A disillusioned, bitter politician and individual perhaps. But his own sense of social justice and his unwavering efforts to ensure equality for all ethnic groups -- something for which he was to pay a heavy price for his much misunderstood "partition" proposal, should at least temper the bitter, emotional allegations against him by his opponents and detractors.

Frankly, though others may view it differently, I am encouraged by Kwayana's pamphlet denouncing "cowards" and "thugs" in the Buxton-Friendship area. Encouraged because, from my perspective, he had at first seemed somewhat reluctant to speak out with that customary timeliness and forthrightness for which I had known him -- long before the eruption of the orchestrated post-1997 political disturbances with their vicious racist manifestations and consequences.

More specifically, because that pamphlet by 'Eusi', as he is fondly known to me, and related incidents, were clearly inspired by what he found repulsive about the repeated violence involving residents of and some "visitors" to his native Buxton.

In my time of involvement in the Guyana media -- from which some politicians felt I should be denied the right to work (eventually I had to leave the country) -- journalists, including this writer, were in the habit of labelling Kwayana (the former Sydney King) as "the Sage of Buxton". He was also described as the "Elder Statesman" of that East Coast village with its own rich social and political history.

Some of that history is now being corrupted by racists, criminals and violence-prone elements. Some of these elements are located in other villages and communities as well.

Kwayana's pamphlet refreshingly contrasts with the hatred and slander of the one circulated during the funeral of Shaka Blair -- the source of which the Police continues to reveal a shocking incapacity to locate. It contains some very disturbing, specific and chilling examples of man's inhumanity to man when the weapon of race takes the place of reason and civilised behaviour.

He has also rightly condemned PPP members when they failed to speak out against the beating of Afro-Guyanese, as happened in a cited example against a Guyanese brother of Golden Grove.

But his handbill, as he explained, was specifically addressed "to those in Buxton-Friendship who consider themselves to be 'struggling'...

"My appeal", Kwayana wrote, "is simple: It is wrong to attack innocent people. You cannot ask for justice and give out injustice. For those who don't care, let me say something else:

“If you attack minibuses and passengers passing through the village, because they have Indians, you are exposing the village minibuses and passengers to attacks by people like those you attack. So far, they are showing better human understanding in this matter..."