Minister Frank Anthony made a huge mistake

Aug 09, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Dr. Frank Anthony has made a huge mistake in his political career. Once he was contesting the PPP congressional elections, he should not have been chairman of the credentials committee.

Alan Munroe held that position earlier this year when the PNC had their congress. Mr. Munroe was not a contestant. I am not making any accusations against the gentleman.

I am contending that he has entered into a conflict of interest situation. You cannot be a contestant in an election yet be in charge of the entire operation that involves the registration of voters.

Six weeks before the congress, the delegates had to fill in a form that gives their personal data – home address, place of employment, telephone numbers, name of spouse, employment of spouse, school of children, employment of children, family members who are PPP card-bearers.

Dr. Anthony would have seen this data. Were the other 87 contestants given access to this information?

Again, let me say I am not making any insinuations at all, but the conflict of interest area needs to be discussed by the wider society.

As it turned out, a number of party members are questioning why their delegate status were denied one week before the congress got started. From Anthony, let’s move to Nagamootoo.

Why did Nagamootoo come fifth in the race for his party’s central committee membership? My assessment of his showing is not based on my belief that the results were not a true reflection of how delegates voted.

Whatever type of interventions occurred, they would not dent the validity of any analysis that sees Nagamootoo as being the real winner of the 2008 congress of the PPP.

If one accepts that there was the traditional behind-the-scenes engineering, then the ballots could not have propelled him into fifth place.

The party schemers would have made sure that hundreds and hundreds of delegates knew how to deal with Nagamootoo, and that was to ignore him.

An amazing contradiction in Guyanese politics played out at Diamond on Sunday. Nagamootoo got the sympathy vote, but that vote had another character to it.

The sympathy vote was also the rebellion vote. Actually, what happened is that though the situation was stacked against Nagamootoo, the patronised delegates betrayed their benefactors and rallied for Nagamootoo.

They also voted for the people who controlled them, but in the end they showed anger at their controllers. They felt that there was a middle way to walk and they took that path.

They fulfilled their obligation to the pipers who called the tune. They cast their ballots for them, so they freed themselves of any guilty conscience. But the ballot was secret.

So what they did was to look inside their souls. Thus they secretly supported Nagamootoo out of love for their party.

This was not expected, and it created enormous confusion. If Nagamootoo had collected a hundred votes, that would have been all right.

But the size was tremendous and the rigging would have had to be too barefaced. Some shaving cream was no doubt applied to Nagamootoo’s tally, but the magnitude could not have been easily erased.

All eyes are now on Moses Nagkassar. Where does he go from here? I have done several pieces on this gentleman, a few of which have been harsh, especially his declaration at his 60th birthday party that he never really had any problem with his party leadership. That was a terrible mistake.

It would seem that the PPP membership has forgiven Moses for his lapses, preferring to see him as the true PPP stalwart that should be right at the front of the table of their party.

Any assessment of Moses’s success at the recently concluded confabulation should include his condemnation of the ban on Gordon Moseley.

This is a significant factor that must be put into the equation by the analyst. Those delegates had to know that Nagamootoo once again had become critical of the PPP Government for some of the unconscionably heartless things it has been doing.

He openly denounced the treatment given to Moseley. This was just two weeks before the congress. Why did they not see him as a nuisance, bringing the party into disrepute?

They did not. On the contrary, they were solidly behind him, as the ballots showed. The real meaning of Nagamootoo’s victory is that the PPP’s membership took a decision that Nagamootoo is needed to act as a countervailing force to those who have lacerated the image and name of the PPP.

They want Nagamootoo to play a greater role in the future direction of their organization. Will he be allowed to? I doubt he will win a seat on the Executive Committee. But the man who parted the sea is back, anyway.

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