“Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?”

Mar 13, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Those words are the opening line of one of the not so famous songs of the Beatles (“When I’m 64.”). They can be seriously applied to Moses Nagamootoo (he will be 64 in the year of the national election if it isn’t held this year). If Nagamootoo is not his party’s candidate at that time, he could easily stand outside Freedom House and ask his party; “Will you still need me, will you still need me when I’m 64?”
They have been some great comebacks in politics of which the two outstanding examples are Deng Shao Peng of China, and Bruce Golding of Jamaica. Golding left the JLP, formed his own party, ran in national elections against the JLP and returned to his original base. The rest is now history.
There is nothing scientific about history. A British thinker once observed that; “history is a stream that dictates its own flow”. Moses Nagamootoo, then, can end up being the presidential candidate of the PPP. The question is when? Certainly not in the coming months when Freedom House will choose the anointed one. History doesn’t favour the fortunes of Nagamootoo. If he gets the coveted prize in 2016, he would be 68 years of age.
If the PPP wins the 2011 elections and the President remains in mental and physical shape, then obviously that person will be re-nominated. Moses then will be 72 when another opportunity comes around. I haven’t done the search through my files to see how many times I have evaluated the post-1997 politics of Nagamootoo. It was from that date that fissures opened up between him and the PPP’s hierarchy, a fight led foremost by Mrs. Jagan.
I can recall at least five pieces, two of which were kind to Nagamootoo, and three of which were not positive. I did a scathing assessment of his speech at his 60th birthday. For me that was the time when I believed Nagamootoo lost the support of those non-PPP sections of the society that saw him as the likely person to change the PPP for the better.
Moses Nagamootoo reappeared in the frame again with an interview in last Sunday’s edition of the Stabroek News. What he had to say will again catapult him in the eyes of commentators here and in the Guyanese Diaspora. Asked if he will run in a new party, Nagamootoo was instant in his answer – the PPP is his party, it is the only party he has known in his life, he is staying with his party.
His declaration was the first time since 2006 that he has been unequivocal and unambiguous that he is staying with the PPP. This revelation will hardly elevate Nagamootoo’s standing in the eyes of a society that is desperately looking for a future. There are bound to be a mountain of questions on this assertion by Nagamootoo.
The first one is whether he sees any possibility of being reintegrated into the nerve-centre of the PPP. That prospect is extremely remote because since 1997, despite his huge, almost colossal historic record in the PPP’s annals, he has in the most miserable way failed to attract the support of any meaningful section of the PPP’s hierarchy.
He does do well among the rank and file but not among the top-dogs at Freedom House. A simple comparison is in order. Navin Chandarpal was dismissed from his OP job. Immediately after, Komal Chand declared he would head a GAWU Labour College.
Here was a PPP big-wig (Chand) that sooner than later came to the side of Chandarpal. The second inquiry is why would Nagamootoo want to stay with a party which seems almost settled in its acceptance that he will no longer be in the hierarchy and a party that has certainly been unkind to him.
What use does a party have for one of its historically known cadres when it cannot offer him a Cabinet post even though he publically declared his desire to have one? President Jagdeo cannot be accused of locking out Nagamootoo after the 2006 election victory because one would want to believe Cabinet selections would have been done at long sessions in the PPP’s war room.
Let us say that Mr. Jagdeo didn’t want Nagamootoo to be a Minister, wasn’t there any faction insider the leadership of the PPP that was vehemently insistent that he should be in the Cabinet? Mr. Nagamootoo is going to be a PPP candidate in the general elections. That is for sure. But one suspects that is all he will be.

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“Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?”

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