The current leaders of the PPP have destroyed the political legacy of Cheddi Jagan

Apr 19, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I have no reason to disbelieve the statement made by Mr. Adam Harris in his column telling us that Moses Nagamootoo, as Minister of Information, openly said that unless Glenn Lall got rid of “that Black man, Adam Harris” the newspaper would never get one advertisement!
On the first reading of this appalling and unfortunate remark I was tempted to see it as an aberration.
However, on closer examination, I am forced to toss what some may see as naïveté out of the window and call it what it is! It is a blatantly racist remark meant not only to identify Mr. Harris in the most superficial and contextually pejorative manner, ie. “That Black man”, but to use it as justification for denying the Kaieteur News advertisement, and by logical extension, deny Mr. Harris the right and opportunity to earn a living.
In light of the recently implied invitation of Mr. Nagamootoo by Donald Ramotar to join the PPP presidential candidate on the campaign trail, all I will say to Mr. Nagamootoo is this.
If he accepts the invite, this is the one statement among all the others he has made that will help to further banish the PPP to where it truly belongs; into the political wilderness! Before I let this sordid issue rest I cannot help but express my deep disappointment that Mr. Nagamootoo is actually of the mindset out of which such miasmic substance would emanate.
Is he telling us something (implicitly) about his self-professed mentor, Cheddi Jagan, (and Mrs. Jagan!)? I have been fortunate to have met the Great Man and I suspect that Dr. Jagan may himself be cringing in embarrassment and agonizing over the inevitable destruction of his legacy that is being carried out with a passion by his protégés, including Moses Nagamootoo.
I may be wrong, but I am having great difficulty wrapping my mind around the concept of Cheddi Jagan referring to a fellow Guyanese in this manner at any forum! I will not comment on Mrs. Jagan’s possible influence on Mr. Nagamootoo in regard to this particular situation!
I am also appalled but certainly not surprised at the latest revelation of the alleged (is it?) involvement of another of Cheddi’s protégés, Clement Rohee, the Crime Chief and an alleged PPP hit man, in the attempted hacking of websites and email accounts in Guyana which has led to the IT Consultant being granted political asylum in Canada. (Do we see now why Jagdeo, Rodrigues, Benn, etc. were so keen to demolish the infrastructure outside the Canadian High Commission a few weeks ago? Malicious tit-for-tat!)
If these claims are true, we now have the substantiated basis for adding Clement Rohee to the list of PPP leaders who will be placed before the International Criminal Court for crimes against the people, joining his predecessor, Ronald Gajraj, who must not fool himself that he is immune to prosecution because of his present physical location. I have always believed that it is never too late to seek salvation.
This dynamic created by the nexus between the 2002 crime/murder-spree and the present day litany of misdeeds against the people by the regime is heading, inevitably, to a conclusion in which our oppressors will have no choice but to face the people. Ole people sey, “Confession is good for the soul,” and in this case it may even win for some of us forgiveness. Some may even say that confession in this instance might even save the lives of some of the guilty! All of us may do well to remember the adage that, “If you live by the sword, so shall you die!” This is just an irrevocable law of nature over which none of us has control. Some people call it KARMA!
The bigger picture within which this isolated incident is contextualized speaks to the Stalinist approach that the PPP has taken to consolidate its totalitarian grip on the Guyanese people.
They are about to spend $1.8 billon on the infamous Laptop Project, they are investing another small fortune (by ordinary peoples’ standards) to install Broadband infrastructure when it is not necessary at this time, and according to the header, they are already trying to shut down/control/gain access to opposition websites, email accounts and other sources of information in cyberspace.
I just want to alert the recipients of this so-called gift, this Trojan Horse in the form of laptops that the PPP is distributing to carefully selected citizens.
It is no gift! It is a device that they will use to infuse households along the length and breadth of Guyana with PPP propaganda, race-baiting, fear-mongering, slander, character assassination, lies; all to get you to believe that the PPP has done well for Guyana, has made life better for Guyanese, has the interest of the country at heart and is still the best thing for Guyana in the future.
But their main message to you is that all other contenders, but moreso the “black man party”, the PNC, will bring doom and gloom onto Guyanese of Indian descent, who comprise the bulk of the PPP constituency.
As I have stated before, and I am going to be very careful here lest I unwittingly ruffle the feathers of the sensitive, I will die to defend the right of free expression, whether it be in the media, or when we cast our ballots at election time.
Do not be fooled by the PPP’s now antiquated but still functional propaganda machinery serviced by Misir and his sorry set of slanderous scribes at OP and at Freedom House!
Even if it means staying at home on elections day, please do not go out there and vote for the PPP! If we do so we will be sending the message to the PPP that they are doing the right thing; that they have done a good job managing the country’s affairs in the last 19 years; that Guyanese are better off than they were 19years ago; that they are building a society we the adults will be proud to leave to our children and grandchildren; that they have the spiritual and moral standing to run the affairs of the country.
If any of us subscribe to the views above return them to office, by all means. However, if you do not subscribe to these views, vote with your conscience, most of all, vote for Guyana!
Finally Mr. Editor, my understanding of Jagdeo, Rohee, Ramsammy, et al., being the purveyors of the inevitable destruction of Cheddi’s legacy begs the question. In politics, or in any other sphere of human endeavour, do the values of the leader ultimately determine his legacy; or is it the values of the people with whom he surrounds himself that will influence how the leader will be remembered into perpetuity?
The articulated and overarching values of Dr. Jagan’s PPP spoke to social justice, equality, honest work, empowerment of the people.
We now see the new PPP under Jagdeo, Ramotar, Luncheon, Hinds, et al.,(four to do the job of one, and they can’t even get it right!) whose values manifest corruption, nepotism, physical intimidation of opponents, marginalisation of non-supporters of the regime, racial and cultural discrimination, licentiousness, spying on the populace and systemic facilitation of criminal conduct, etc.
For what will Dr. Jagan and the PPP be remembered? Will these two contending value systems and their respective outcomes be reviewed by historians as mutually exclusive, hence preserving Dr. Jagan’s legacy in its pristine form, circa 1997, or, will historians define his enduring legacy by bundling the outcomes of his tenure as leader of the PPP with the outcomes of his successors’ rule? We will just have to wait and see.
However, with the unceasing invocation of Cheddi Jagan’s name by the present leadership of the PPP it may not be too difficult to predict how he will be viewed by scholars in the future.
I suspect that when asked about his legacy, people will respond that, “Cheddi was a good and decent man but……”
It may be apt to look at the legacy of his “twin” in public life, Forbes Burnham. Historians will have a very different process to analyse when they sit to define the legacy of LFSB. When he died, many breathed a sigh of relief and Mr. Hoyte and others in the PNC desisted from invoking Burnham’s name (at least in public) unless it was absolutely necessary.
I suppose that Mr. Hoyte might have had the objective of not wanting his tenure to be “tainted” by constant reference to the man who was viewed by many as having been bad for Guyana.
However, there is a sub-narrative to Burnham’s tenure which historians will not be able to ignore.
There is a school of thought which posits the view that Mr. Burnham’s “failure” as a leader was due not so much to his lack of vision and competence, as it was the result of the inability of the people around him to transform his vision into reality.
To me Burnham’s situation boils down, in essence, to the same as Jagan’s.
It seems that they both surrounded themselves with people who were incapable of lending the support to their respective leaders (for whatever reasons), which would have facilitated achieving their common objective of freeing the Guyanese people from colonialism and building a new society premised on social justice, equality, fairness and development of the nation, by the people, with the people and for the people!
Hubert Wong

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