Jagdeo still has not learnt that a fool is only discovered when he speaks

Jan 24, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The letter by my old friend and Navin Chandrapal, “A voter has the right to secrecy,” (SN 01-21-11), and the response of President Bharrat Jagdeo as reported by Demerarawave.com, “ Jagdeo calls Navin Chandrapal vindictive, bitter because he was fired for non-performance,”  are important for several reasons.  They show the difference in intellect in both individuals, they signal that the PPP has borne the ultimate fruit of its undemocratic practices, and they are symptomatic of the grandiose delusions of President Jagdeo. I shall first deal with President Jagdeo’s intellect, or rather lack of.
President Jagdeo at a press conference on 01-17-11 in response to the issue of choosing a presidential candidate for the PPP stated that he was in favour of voting by a show of hands because the danger of secret voting was that prospective candidates could promise the electors “things to get them to vote for them.” Mr. Chandrapal in his letter dealt with this statement and by using logic showed that Mr. Jagdeo’s utterance was illogical and did not support the argument made by the President for a show of hands, but rather it supported the case for secret voting. At no time did Mr. Chandrapal critcise nor attacked the person or character of President Jagdeo. He solely dealt with the issue raised by the president. One would therefore expect President Jagdeo to rebut Mr. Chandrapal on the arguments he made.
However, President Jagdeo, having realised that he made a fool of himself, and that he could not challenge Navin’s argument, resorted to attacking Navin’s person and character in his now infamous “cuss down and buse out” style. But in so doing he has exposed his poor intellect even further. President Jagdeo said that he fired Navin because, “…of lack of performance.
In the several years that he was at the Office of the President, he never completed a single assignment for me.” Now Navin has been at OP for well over a decade.  Assuming, but not conceding, that the President was correct, it means then that Navin must have been rather inefficient or incompetent, or down right insubordinate. It stands to reason that President Jagdeo is an extremely poor manager for condoning nonperformance for over a decade.
If he is a competent person then maybe he kept Navin at OP because of party affiliation or because he was a friend? In this case President Jagdeo would be guilty of favouritism, nepotism and cronyism.  President Jagdeo still has not learnt that a fool is only discovered when he speaks, and he loves to speak, er cuss down.
In his diatribe on Navin the President said, “He did absolutely no work, except going to the rumshop.” So “going to the rumshop” is work!! Unless off course you are doing an errand for someone or spying on the conversations of the citizens!! How come it is OK for one minister to imbibe himself, pistol whip a kid over a woman and run down a motor cyclist, but it is not OK for Navin to take a drink? Could it be that the drunken minister is a Jagdeo yes man, whilst Navin frequently criticized Jagdeo’s policies at party and cabinet level? In fact Navin has said that he was dismissed because he was a critic of Jagdeo at party and cabinet level, (SN 01-22-11). It means then that so long as you are a Jagdeo sycophant your services will be retained no matter how incompetent you are or how criminal is your conduct. That Jagdeo is intolerable of criticism should come as no surprise to anyone, because he was nurtured and conditioned in an undemocratic party.
Jagdeo is the ultimate fruit of Janet Jagan’s PPP. He was foisted onto the PPP by her. Off course being less cultured, groomed, and intellectually endowed Jagdeo comes across as crass, crude, and plain vindictive. So long as the PPP retains its obsolete party structure and democratic centralism it would continue to produce Jagdeos. The party is so organised that those few at the top will always perpetuate themselves in the leadership of the party. I am sure that Navin, Moses Nagamooto, and Komal Chand now see the folly of democratic centralism.
In discussing the PPP I like to use the analogy of milk. When milk is boiled the cream rises to the top. When it is spoilt the cream sinks to the bottom. The PPP is like sour milk. The cream always sinks to the bottom. How else can you explain the ousting of Navin, Moses Nagamootoo, Khemraj Ramjattan, Rajendra Bissessar, Lionel Peters, Jinah Rahaman, and yours truly? God knows we were not in the anti dictatorship struggle to accumulate mansions and fortunes.
The PPP is now firmly in the hands of Jagdeo.  Someone has to rescue the PPP from him and his nouveau riche elite and it seems that Navin has assumed the role of liberator.
So long as the PPP is in government it will be very difficult to wrest control from Jagdeo and his accolytes due to the abundance of cash and state jobs to buy loyalties. However if the PPP were to lose the government and be relegated to the opposition benches it will be much easier, as all of Jagdeo’s carpetbaggers will switch allegiance to the new rulers. The party will then be returned to the ousted party stalwarts of the 70’s and 80’s. I have much respect for Navin. In the 70’s when he was the First Secretary of the PYO I had envisaged him as the future leader of the PPP.
I guess his time has come. I trust that he will rebuild the PPP into a modern open democratic non communist party where the presidential candidate, as well as office bearers, will be elected directly by the membership, and where members’ human right to free speech will not be curtailed. Only then will the cream ever rise to the top. It is time to forget Marxism Leninism. We now have to remember our Holy Scriptures and I remind Navin of an episode in the Mahabharat where Lord Krishna advised King Yudhistir to conduct business in open court so all could hear.
This is the way to defeat subterfuge, treachery, and corruption. The PNCR has already begun to rebuild and democratize itself. It is only a matter of time before Corbin is replaced as Leader of that party. It is time the PPP follow suit.
President Jagdeo also said of the old PPP stalwarts, “I think they are extremely resentful and jealous of young people taking leadership positions because it exposes their mediocrity and underperformance.” I asked a professor of psychology what he thought of President Jagdeo’s outbursts and the professor said, “They are symptomatic of one who suffers from grandiose delusions.”
Malcolm Harripaul

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