I got mail

Oct 13, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I was in the High Court in the proceedings of the libel President Jagdeo brought against me, when my phone vibrated. One of Adam Harris’ friends (she introduced herself to me at the supermarket as a good friend of Harris who later confirmed for me that he knows the lady very well from Eccles) instructed me that I failed to mention the name Neaz Subhan, the editor of GINA in my column of former PNC Government officials who are now intricately connected with both Mr. Jagdeo’s office and the wider government he leads.
To recap, the essay dealt with the President’s reminder to the PPP supporters who attended the rally at Albion two Sundays ago that they should be suspicious of the Kaieteur News because it is edited by Adam Harris, a man who once worked for the PNC Government. I enumerated the persons who once served the PNC government but now have intimately overlapping relations with the Jagdeo administration.
Apart from the telephone call from Adam’s friend, I received several others and a number of e-mails about omissions. The e-mails poured in. These people are so right. I left out prominent names in the PNC Government that Mr. Jagdeo has warmly welcomed in his network of both personal and political friendship. Here is an extension of my previous enumeration.
We start with Neaz Subhan. Adam Harris is someone I have known a long time when he was a public servant. For all the criticisms made of Harris when he served the PNC Government, I have never heard anyone accuse him of participation in PNC-related violence.
Neaz Subhan was part of the PNC’s post election confrontation with the PPP Government in 1997 and 2001. The PPP television channel has footage of Mr. Subhan in action not to mention all the stuff Channel 9 has of the activities of him in those days. Does the young Guyanese generation know that Attorney-General, Charles Ramson, literally grew up within the ambit of the PNC? Ramson’s father was the manager of the PNC’s Head Office, Congress Place for more than fifteen years. I assumed the younger Ramson would have known at a very personal level all the PNC leaders since the PNC was in power then.
Now that the second Ramson is with the PPP, his son works in the Office of the President where he knows the top PPP leaders.
Just before President Jagdeo announced to the Albion audience that Harris worked with the PNC Government, Joe Hamilton was introduced as an election supporter of the PPP and may very well be on the PPP’s election list of candidates. No one found it appropriate to tell the crowd that Hamilton was in the PNC leadership.
There was a repetition of Albion last Sunday in Kitty. All of a sudden, PPP leaders have been afflicted with amnesia about the PNC people that they have now embraced.
On stage last Sunday at Kitty was a friend of mine and UG colleague, Dr. Emmanuel Cummings. He participated in the PNC’s 2001 election campaign when his political party People’s United Party (PUP) led by Dr. Max Hanoman, merged with the PNC. In one of those e-mails, I was advised that Manniram Prashad was involved in PNC’s “Reelect President Hoyte bandwagon. To avoid getting into legal trouble, I went to the newspapers for that year and yes, I found out that he was. It is a public secret that the President and Mr. Prashad are very close.
I am still at a loss to understand why no journalist as yet hasn’t asked the President that if PPP supporters must be suspicious of the intentions of the Kaieteur News because of Harris’s past association with the PNC then why shouldn’t they be of the countless former PNC personnel who not only serve the Jagdeo regime but who have now climbed the PPP 2011 bandwagon?
Of course if the PPP supporters believe their President, that Kaieteur News must not be accepted because of its editor, then logically, they have a large moral obligation to vote against the PPP in the election because Joe Hamilton, Manniram Prashad, Dr. Cummings and others will be on the slate of candidates. This is going to be a headache for Donald Ramotar if and when he participates in the upcoming presidential debate.
If the question is put to him, how is he going to answer? In a forthcoming column I will expand on the electoral potential of the newly found friends of the PPP that were once in the PNC camp. Will they bring votes? I doubt it!

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I got mail

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