Sooba’s soogee

Nov 08, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Two weeks ago, I told Christopher Ram that Ramon Gaskin is very superb with the analysis of statistics, financial figures, legal language and related fields, but is not a good political analyst. Ram knew that I wasn’t putting down Gaskin, but offering my opinion.
I think Gaskin has a fine mind and excels in those areas I have mentioned. He has done valuable work for the Guyanese people who need to understand the complex dimensions of certain investment documents.
In the vicinity of raw politics, I don’t think Gaskin brings the same cutting edge analysis. The occasion for giving my opinion to Ram was an interview Chris did recently with Gaskin, in which Gaskin stated that Cheddi Jagan would not have employed someone like Dr. Leslie Ramsammy. This was Gaskin’s reaction after Ram uttered complete shock at the condescending advice Dr Ramsammy gave to working class farmers. He exclaimed that selling papers at the market will not make you rich.
Gaskin felt that Ramsammy’s dismissal was the kind of bourgeois mentality that Jagan would not have tolerated, and that people like Ramsammy would not have found a place in Jagan’s Cabinet. I pointed out to Ram that this was a complete misunderstanding of the politics of Cheddi Jagan, and that Jagan was quite happy to empower and put in his Cabinet people with far more bourgeois mentality and wealth than Ramsammy.
I went on to point out to Chris that though I despise the politics of Ramsammy, he is one of the PPP mandarins who is less known for ostentatious wealth. After he came to power, Jagan surrounded himself with multi-billionaires investing them with State power. One of these rich men literally bought up state lands for a song through the conduit of an infamous Hindu pandit.
This column is more about Gaskin and less about Jagan, so let’s move on. I took public umbrage with Gaskin (in a published letter) when he wrote a defence of acting Town Clerk, Carol Sooba, in the May 21 (2013) edition of this paper and the Stabroek News. If Gaskin had understood the political context in which Sooba was employed as Town Clerk, I don’t think he would have waxed so lyrical about Sooba. It would appear to me that Gaskin was fed up with what he saw at City Hall, and by the use of logic (in philosophy a thing can be logical yet be intrinsically wrong), elevated Sooba.
It reminded me of the famous professorial support from Oxford and Cambridge for Stalin during the reign of the Nazis. If Hitler was bad, then Stalin had to be good. So for Gaskin, if the City Council was incompetent, then Sooba was the saviour. Last Sunday Stabroek editorial on Sooba is not a positive assessment of her competence at all, but leaving aside ability, what about the missing link of Gaskin – the political context?
Sooba, it would appear, has been handed a soogee (rope used to do washing) by the PPP Government to clean City Hall. But clean City Hall of what? Surely it cannot be of incompetence when you read the Stabroek editorial on Sooba’s own incompetence. Could it be that the soogee has been handed to Sooba to undertake political hanging?
Sooba is either incapable of doing what Ramon Gaskin is exceedingly good at – analyzing financial documents – or she is using her City Hall position to do political assignments for the PPP.
So far, Ms. Sooba is very sparse with the information she lets out on which citizen isn’t paying up their rates. The few names published so far take in some well known critics of the PPP Government. But more than the select publication of names by Ms. Sooba, the way she uses her soogee brings into question the future of this nation.
What is taking place at City Hall is so demonic that it can easily slip into instability and our “angelic,’ “patriotic,” “concerned,” business folks don’t seem to be concerned. Every detail of Ms. Sooba’s present function at City Hall indicates that she has become not the boss, not the controller, but the virtual tsar of City Hall. It would seem that Ms Sooba has total power at City Hall. This is in an area of municipal government where the incumbents were elected, with the PPP securing only 27 percent of the vote.
To add insult to injury, Sooba’s soogee was handed to her by a government which lost a majority in the last general elections and behaves as if the City Council is a domain of the Ministry of Local Government.
Hello Ramon! Where are you? Can you contextualize Sooba’s soogee, please?

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Sooba’s soogee

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