Parents and victims: The injustices of life

Mar 10, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

How can you compare two parents, one of which was never known in this world, had no proper education, remained obscured and hardly did anything significant or nationally known in their own country, and the other parent who was one of the country’s most powerful persons and at one time was the nation’s most powerful citizen. There can be no such comparison.
Dr. Cheddi Jagan was Premier of Guyana from 1957 to 1964, then President from 1992 to 1997. Mr. Ralph Ramkarran joined the PPP in the late sixties and has served for more than twenty-five years in the inner council of the PPP. Dr. and Mrs. Jagan and Mr. Ramkarran then have histories behind them with many stories to be told, some undoubtedly positive, and some most definitely negative.
Children of course love their parents and want to protect them. These children must rise above the occasion and recognize that the lives of their influential parents have not been filled with sweet-smelling roses all the time. Whatever adjective you want to use – naïve, myopic, indecent – there can be no argument that children must acknowledge if and when their powerful parents have done wrong. The daughter of President Forbes Burnham wrote a column in the newspaper in which she judged her father critically for some of the wrong things he did; she mentioned the mistreatment of Sister Hazel Campayne, then Headmistress of St. Rose’s High School
Twice on this page, I wrote about the nonsensical utterances of one of the daughters of Saddam Hussein. After he was captured, from her base in Jordan, she denounced what she observed was mistreatment of her father by the Iraqi and American authorities. She felt for her father.
Didn’t she feel for the thousands of children whose parents her father killed? I don’t believe in the death penalty but I think a more preferred death for Hussein would have been the Mussolini treatment.
After the end of WW2, the Italians captured the fascist dictator, beat him to death and hung his body on a meat hook for public display. Mussolini’s granddaughter is a Member of Parliament. Does she know Mussolini murdered one of the finest minds of the 20th century – the philosopher, Antonio Gramsci?
Nadira Jagan wrote in the newspaper that she cannot help hating people who criticize her mother, Mrs. Jagan. One hopes that this child realizes that thousands may have reasons for such hate of a woman who stood in the political arena for over sixty years and became the country’s president. I can offer Nadira Jagan incontrovertible evidence of grievous wrong-doing by Mrs. Janet Jagan against people who have children. Over dinner with me and Guyana’s senior journalist, Bert Wilkinson, the former husband of Ms. Gail Teixeira, Mr. Fazal Khan, said that Mrs. Jagan dismissed him as CEO for Guyana Airways Corporation after he stood up in 1999 at a members’ meeting and was the lone voice that disagreed with her nomination of Bharrat Jagdeo as the presidential choice to succeed her. He said Mrs. Jagan was enraged at his dissent. Mr. Khan gave this writer permission to publish that episode
The daughter of Mr. Donald Ramotar said to me that her father fought for democracy in Guyana and no one should deny him that distinction.
I reported this conversation in one of my columns and I did note in that article that she was right. I couldn’t agree more. But I did mention that many fought alongside Donald Ramotar and have been derecognized by the PPP Government of which Tacuma Ogunseye and Clive Thomas stand out. These are two of the finest citizens this country produced.
We now have a letter by the son of Mr. Ralph Ramkarran (SN, Feb 9) in which he has replied to Joey Jagan’s attack on his father, Mr. Ralph Ramkarran. He wrote that since Joey Jagan defends his father, Cheddi then he, Kamal Ramkarran will do the same. But here is the startling section of the letter “People write and say nonsense about politicians either because they don’t know better or cannot help themselves.”
Now let us see who the two men are that Komal Ramkarran is talking about. One is Dr. Jagan, the other is Ralph Ramkarran.
One has been one of Guyana’s most powerful men rising to the level of President. The other is in the leadership of the party that has been shaping the destiny of Guyana for just under 18 years now.
My question to Kamal Ramkarran is this; does he think the children of Tacuma Ogunseye, Clive Thomas and hundreds of children like them have reasons to criticize the PPP leadership?

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