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Does President Jagdeo believe in magic?

Jun 30, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Mr. Jagdeo certainly hasn’t got foolproof explanations when dealing with complex crises. It is one of his failings. And it opens him to devastating critiques from commentators and editors. Two recent pronouncements from Mr. Jagdeo warrant analytical treatment. One has to do with Dr. Leslie Ramsammy.
The President wants proof that Ramsammy was involved with Roger Khan. He dismisses what Simels said about Ramsammy in wire-tapping operations. Mr. Jagdeo emphasises proof. One hopes that Mr. Jagdeo knows that there isn’t a country in the world, not one single country in the world, that charges a person for a crime based on the failing of a polygraph.
Once the test is failed, you come under suspicion. But it would be foolish to take a man or a woman in front of a jury and say yes they sold secret to the enemies because he/she did not come out successfully with the lie detector examination.
Here is another challenge to President Jagdeo who called me a fool and a sleaze ball. If he can cite one example where a charge was instituted based on a failed lie detector test, I will immediately stop this column. If I lose, Glenn Lall should honour his obligation and bring the column to an end.
This same President who wants proof of Ramsammy’s dealings with Khan dismissed a number of CANU officers without any proof whatsoever of wrong-doing.
The second statement is theoretically tied to the first example. Jagdeo repeated on Friday, a perception he touched on about a week ago. According to what is reported in the newspapers, Mr Jagdeo said there are people in Guyana who have valuable functions because whatever they write or speak will be transported to societies abroad. Mr. Jagdeo remarked that the Guyanese newspapers are read abroad.
If this wasn’t a deadly serious topic, one could have laughed at Mr. Jagdeo’s observation. What makes Mr. Jagdeo think that what his regime does is not conveyed to the rest of the Caribbean? I was asked to pick up four persons from the airport, coming in from Trinidad for a personal event here and those people know what goes on here.
They think that the Guyana Government is a dictatorship. When I pressed them they spoke of one-man government in Guyana. I asked them about that and they told me they read it from the syndicated columnist, Rickey Singh.
A Greek student doing a doctoral dissertation on Guyana sought an interview with me. He is thoroughly familiar with the political terrain here. Outside of the interview, he inquired why the secrecy about the investor(s) in the so-called Marriott Hotel. Could it be that President Jagdeo believes in magic?
He says that people in other countries pick up the negative vibes about Guyana that the newspapers carry. President Jagdeo specifically mentioned crime-reporting. Well, it has to be magic that they pick up the newspapers and only read about what the commentators and editorials say and they are oblivious to the perversities that characterise governance in Guyana.
Let’s see how this works. A Bajan goes on the net, hits the keyboard for Kaieteur News and Stabroek News, reads about a massacre at Lindo Creek.  Then he/she reads about a robbery where a woman was shot dead, then another act of violence by robbers and the story goes on. But why when he/she sees another item in which the President of a country is reported in the press as saying that he knows he is controversial and he doesn’t care that news item is not read? It is.
If President Jagdeo believes in magic then he should rid himself of that conceptualisation because magic does not exist in the real, scientific world we live in. Yes, people in foreign countries read about the crimes, but they also read about scandals after scandals after scandals that occur within the Government of Guyana.
So is the President telling us that Caribbean readers do not know that he dismissed anti-narcotic agents without proof of dishonesty; that there is a mystery surrounding the identity of a hotel investor; that there is a confessed drug dealer about to be jailed in the US and there is talk that he had close contacts with people in the Guyana Government; that NIS money in CLICO is missing and no one knows where it is; that there was a public spat between Mr. Jagdeo and his wife in which serious allegations were made? Finally, if I am one of those persons with an important function because my negative writings are read in other countries, then Mr. Jagdeo and I should talk.
Call me, Mr. President.

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