I’m glad my libel defence reduced PPP votes in 2011

Aug 06, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In the General Secretary’s report read by Mr. Donald Ramotar in his capacity as leader of the PPP at his party’s Congress in Port Mourant, Mr. Ramotar told the delegates that the libel suit that his friend and colleague, Bharrat Jagdeo, in his capacity as President brought against me did not help the PPP in its vote-getting campaign in 2011.
Mr. Ramotar said that the private media and the opposition; “took full advantage of the libel case.” Can someone ask Ramotar what he means by “full advantage?” What any citizen of this country would find unbelievable is Mr. Ramotar’s logic. Simply put, the media reported what came out of the mouth of Mr. Ramotar’s great friend, Roger Luncheon. To date, only one witness has effectively given testimony and that is Roger Luncheon.
Is Mr. Ramotar saying that when Luncheon answered the questions, the press, so in love with Jagdeo and Luncheon, should not have published the daily answers of Luncheon? Surely, those delegates cannot be so stupid to think that as Ramotar spoke, they accept he was right, when it was Jagdeo that sued. How can you sue someone for libel, the person has to defend themselves, yet you cry that the libel case was to your opponent’s advantage? So didn’t you think when you were suing?
This has to be one of the weakest moments in Mr. Ramotar’s twenty-month-old presidency. It is really incredible to know that Mr. Ramotar is capable of such mediocre thoughts. All the media did was to go into the court and publish what Dr. Luncheon said. The Office of the President, under Mr. Ramotar, sent a witness to testify that his job description was to cut out and store the contents of The Freddie Kissoon Column. But that witness told the court he didn’t understand the contents in a majority of the articles. This is what the media reported. It is left to the media to ask Ramotar what is meant by the press taking “full advantage” of the libel suit.
Mr. Ramotar also accused the opposition of having “full advantage “of the libel trial. This does not need further discussion, because the case so far centres on the five-day testimony of Roger Luncheon. It was Roger Luncheon who told the judge that he, Luncheon offered a Pradoville 2 house lot to a Linden politician. It was Roger Luncheon who told the judge in response to a question put to him that at the time of the trial there were no African Guyanese qualified for ambassadorial postings. At that particular period (July –August 2011), there were no African Guyanese that headed a diplomatic mission, whether at the top or secondary level.
During the election campaign of 2011, these statements from Dr. Luncheon formed part of the campaign rhetoric. One assumes that the PPP leadership were annoyed that the libel trial was highlighted during the 2011 campaign. What is beyond assumption is that the PPP leadership is highly incensed at the contents of the trail so far.
At the funeral service for Reepu Daman Persaud earlier this year, Mr. Jagdeo in his eulogy made a condemnatory reference to a part of my research that came out at the trial on the ethnic composition of the hierarchy of the public service. Shortly after that exclamation, Mr. Nigel Hughes wrote a letter in the newspaper that informed Guyanese that before the trial commenced, he informed Mr. Jagdeo’s lawyer, Mr. Anil Nandlall, that the trial will bring out explosive information and asked if he wanted to proceed. Mr. Nandlall went ahead with Mr. Jagdeo’s writ.
What now is President Ramotar crying about? The President’s carping on the libel trial at his party’s Congress last Saturday is graphically vivid testimony of the ineptitude of the PPP leadership. This party and its hierarchy drift from one egregious mistake to another since Mr. Jagdeo took office in 1999. What Jagdeo did not tell his funeral audience, and Ramotar’s failure to inform his congressional colleagues, is that Mr. Jagdeo’s libel writ remains the only libel filed against a practicing academic by a Head of Government in the history of the British West Indies and only the second one in the region by a Head of Government.
The truth of the matter is President Jagdeo, and no doubt his PPP colleagues, at the time thought that they would have bullied their way in court. This is how the PPP has administered this country since 1999. What more evidence do you want of this, where a minority government behaves as if it won the last general elections.

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I’m glad my libel defence reduced PPP votes in 2011

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