Expressions of human nature after the elections

Dec 14, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

A few months back, I mentioned in one of my columns that many among Bharrat Jagdeo’s supporters will fault him if the PPP should lose the elections. They would come out swinging against him. It has started. Depending on the perspective you use, you can say that the PPP did lose the elections. They won fewer votes than the combined opposition. The Speaker of the Parliament will come from the opposition. The opposition is in the majority in the House.
Given the hundreds of millions of dollars from Freedom House and state resources that went into the PPP’s election campaign the result for Freedom House was humiliating, ignominious and deadly. The lovely embracers of Mr. Jagdeo when he was President are taking some swipes at him.
We can start with the owner of German’s Restaurant. Swinging the corner from Brickdam into Camp Street earlier this year, he yelled out to me that he heard I had advocated a boycott of his business. We didn’t get to talk because he was driving and so was I. I simply wrote that I would have lunch elsewhere. I think that is my right.
But there was some castigation from me in my columns against Mr. Urling’s pro-Jagdeo letters in the two independent dailies. I remember writing that he failed to observe any wrongdoing on the part of the Jagdeo presidency but found time to knock Dr. Janet Bulkan’s critique of the LCDS.
Well I was surprised to see a letter in Sunday’s Stabroek News from Mr. Urling calling on the new Guyanese President to abrogate his predecessor’s ban on state advertisements to the two independent dailies.
As Mr. Urling observed in his missive; “This indefensible and unmerited (sic) policy has no place in a free and open, democratic society.” In all the letters he wrote to the newspapers, Mr. Urling, the Secretary of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce, never saw it as the morally right thing to do to make this identical call to President Jagdeo. I suppose there’s more licks coming to Jagdeo from Mr. Urling’s pen. We await the next round.
Then there is Sir Ron Sanders. In his KN columns earlier this year, he opined that the ruling party will win because of Mr. Jagdeo’s economic policies. He subsequently outdid himself by asserting that under the PPP Government, Guyana is reclaiming its lost El Dorado. The election results showed that the electorate didn’t think so.
Last Sunday, we saw a different Ron Sanders.
We just have to glance at the title of Sanders’s column to see his seismic shift. Captioned, “Caribbean electorates: Not for sale,” Mr. Sanders is going to invoke the wrath of Mr. Jagdeo, not to mention his father-in-law, Sir Shridath Ramphal, who contributed to the panegyrics delivered at the Day of Appreciation.
I don’t know if Ramphal presented his eulogy at the stadium but I saw him on television extolling the virtues of President Jagdeo.
Sanders told his readers that the ruling party in Guyana manipulated state resources to boost its prospects during the campaign. He asserted that the ruling party in Guyana is not alone in the Caribbean in using the state media for propaganda purposes and denying a voice to the opposition.
Really, these are harsh judgements coming from a columnist who just two months ago was singing praise to the Guyanese ruling party.
Look out for more of people like Urling and Sanders as the Ramotar presidency and the combined opposition sit down to carve out a good governance agenda. It is the manifestation of human nature in full force. It is doubtful that this swing in opinions will surprise anyone. It is a natural occurrence in human society. Mr. Jagdeo is gone. There is no fear of him. Those who once cozied up to him know that the wallet has passed on to another president.
What we are all waiting anxiously for is the first person from the PPP that will step out and lay the blame for the election results on Mr. Jagdeo.
Of course it is being whispered among PPP constituencies that he is the cause for the minority presidency but so far no one has the boldness to step forward. But it will happen and it will come when the opposition begins to flex its muscles on the national budget and wrest serious concessions from Mr. Ramotar.
When that scenario unfolds, if I were Mr. Jagdeo, I would take a long vacation away from Guyana.

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Expressions of human nature after the elections

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