The gypsy lied: The ghost of yesterday is alive

Jul 25, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

One of the most hilarious yet tragic moments in the political history of this country involved a dispute between Mr. Ralph Ramkarran in his capacity of Speaker of the National Assembly and Minister Clement Rohee. It occurred in Parliament. Mr. Rohee had a request twice turned down by the Speaker, then said to Mr. Ramkaran that if he cannot get his protest accepted in Parliament, “we will take the struggle outside.” That quote was the words he used. Here on display was a phantasmagoria of psychic distortions, never mind the comical aspect of Mr. Rohee’s reply.
Inside Mr. Rohee’s mind, he was thinking of the days of struggle against the Burnham Government when the Guyanese people took to the streets in daily protest and the PPP leaders were there. The last time Mr. Rohee was in the street in protest was with the WPA and the PPP in 1989 confronting the ERP content of the 1989 Hoyte budget. In Mr. Rohee’s psychology is the fiction that he could still lead marches for democracy. Mr. Rohee is living in the past.
He has become one of the new Burnhams and the Mark Benschops of Guyana are the ones in the street protesting the ghost of the past that the PPP Government has preserved. The gypsy lied to all of us after 1992. The ghost of yesterday never went away. It is alive and robotically controlled by the PPP leadership. It would have been amusing to see the reception Mr. Rohee would have received from the onlookers of Georgetown. More importantly who would have been the protestors? Genuine pro-democracy human beings or paid demonstrators like those who stood outside Khemraj Ramjattan’s office and hid their faces as the cameras captured them? Knowing Mark Benschop, it would have been rib-tickling because Benschop would have probably staged a counter-picket and got his supporters to laugh at Rohee
Enter Mr. Ralph Ramkarran. What is to follow below is not an equation between Mr. Ramkarran with Mr. Rohee. I honestly believe Mr. Ramkarran is of vast superior cloth as a politician than Mr. Rohee. My task here is to situate the psychological conceptualizations of both men within the framework of the ghost that is eating up Guyana. Mr. Ramkarran is in the spotlight. Letters in both independent dailies are pouring in on him. Since he announced his candidacy for the PPP’s nomination for the general elections in 2010, he has been interviewed several times and continues to reply to his critics. Mr. Ramkarran has two viewpoints that should be read by all of us who are concerned about the nature of the PPP’s leadership since 1999.
One is a published missive in response to a signatory named, Robert Maxwell (SN, 22), the other is a new item on Mr. Ramkarran in the Stabroek News (July 21). I will deal with the second one first. Mr. Ramkarran is quoted as saying that “he chose to be part of the PPP and abide by its rule against public criticism.” That is an honest position for which Mr. Ramkarran should be given some measure of respect. However, it is not the norm of modern politics. The Labour Party under PM Tony Blair saw torrential criticism of Mr. Blair from his own Parliamentarians. We saw that with the Panday Government in Trinidad, and under PM Manning when Keith Rowley openly criticized his Prime Minister.
If Mr. Ramkarran clings to that position then he has to put himself in the place of the voter and this is where Mr. Maxwell comes in. Mr. Maxwell refers Mr. Ramkarran to the venalities committed by the PPP Government. Why then should a voter accept Mr. Ramkarran’s political qualities as against others who are competing against the PPP when Mr. Ramkarran admitted that he does not believe in public criticism of the wrongs of his party in government? This is a thought Mr. Ramkarran should studiously reflect on. Speaking as a voter, I would prefer to cast a ballot for someone who spoke out against atrocities committed by the PPP in its 19-year-old rule
Finally, Mr. Ramkarran answered Mr. Maxwell by supplying him with his record of anti-dictatorship struggle which includes visiting with his mother his father in jail. Mr. Ramkarran needs to ask himself how much has changed since he originally began the composition of his balance sheet. Mark Benschop’s son died while he (Benschop) was in prison. He was charged for treason, spent five years and was never convicted. Mr. Oliver Hinckson was charged for sedition that was outrageously instituted and was denied bail. In a later column we will juxtapose Mr. Ramkarran’s record with the action of the ghost that roams the land.

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The gypsy lied: The ghost of yesterday is alive

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