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The campaign’s Champagne moments
Nov 20, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I need to clarify the use of the term “Champagne moments.” Normally in literature, a Champagne moment is used in a positive context. It connotes a celebratory mood. When someone says; “This calls for a celebration,” another would say, “then bring out the Champagne.” I will deviate from this traditional route and put another meaning to this well used phrase.
By Champagne moment, I mean it is time to drink some wine and feel high after the hilarity and asininity that just unfolded before your eyes and you are still laughing and want to laugh and laugh. So just drink the Champagne and keep laughing.
We start with Friday night. I came home and my daughter, who was looking at television, told me Nigel Hughes is on Channel 9. So I went to see what he was saying. It turned out he was the guest on an AFC election show.
It was interesting to hear why Hughes took to the political field in this election campaign. He said that he has a bitter memory of his grand-father being denied promotion to Post-Master General in 1960. He said the then government refused to appoint his grand-dad to that position because of the old man’s ethnicity. Hughes went on to state that he is seeing in Guyana the same thing all over again – ethnic discrimination. I missed the other section of his assessment because the phone rang.
I hardly look at television. If my daughter didn’t tell me about the Hughes interview, I would not have known about it. So the phone rang, and this friend of mine sounded out of breath. He yelled; “Freddie, yuh can’t miss this, go to Channel 6 right now.” Then he hung up. It was a paid PPP programme. So at the same time there was an AFC election item on Channel 9, there was a PPP one on CNS 6. Joey Jagan was hosting the PPP show.
Now I know why my friend telephoned me. From time to time, I would get calls to go to Channel 6 when Joey Jagan and CN Sharma are together.
Joey Jagan utilizes most of his energy on these programmes calling me all sorts of nasty names. This time it was different. There was no cussing down of Freddie Kissoon. But what I saw was incredible. Here are some samples.
In response to a caller that he has now rejoined the PPP and will have no support it if it wins, Jagan said, “No, no, don’t get me wrong, I will still speak out but on little things this time, like cleaning up the zoo and cutting the grass in Georgetown.”
In response to another caller about President Jagdeo’s extravagant pension, he intoned, “Madam, what can I do? My views are irrelevant.”
Can this type of performance win votes?
How about another “Champagne moment” with Gail Teixeira? At a press conference, Ms. Teixeira walked right into election suck-sand. But it was hilarious. Speaking about former Commissioner of Police, Winston Felix, she made use of the WikiLeaks cables. She quoted directly from the cables what the US Embassy said about Felix.
But it is not the act of quoting from the cables that was hilarious; it was what she actually chose to quote. It was the then US Ambassador praising Felix for his cooperation. But the very Embassy said the same thing about Ms. Teixeira and went so far as to tell Washington that Ms. Teixeira implied that the President had a connection with Roger Khan.
It has to be a crazy world we live in. Surely, the last thing that should be on Ms. Teixeira’s mind in attacking Felix would be the WikiLeaks cable. But this election campaign is bringing out some wacky episodes. Mr. Teixeira went on to state that it was unprecedented in Caribbean politics for a former Commissioner of Police to be an election candidate.
But Ms. Teixeira was a participant in 2001 and 2006 for the PPP/C and had to know that it remains unprecedented in world politics for a Vice Chancellor (in the case of Guyana at the only University) to be an election candidate.
Vice-Chancellor James Rose of UG was a candidate in two consecutive national elections. Unlike Felix, he was on the job at the time.
No one should tolerate the use of violence in the election campaign and it must be stopped by the police right away and dealt with severely. One anti-PPP heckler in Berbice had to spend a night in the police lock-up.
But Kwame McCoy seems to be chalking up some serious incidents on his slate yet he is lucky so far to miss the lock-ups.
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