Ramotar has committed political hara-kiri

Nov 14, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Come month end, Mr. Ramotar would have achieved three years of presidential rule. If you juxtapose the negatives and positives of his tenure, a caricature emerges, in that there isn’t a juxtaposition at all; there aren’t any positives but an ocean of negatives.
Think as hard as you can, the positives are not there. What has Mr. Ramotar done that you can cheer him on, admire him for, be grateful about, wish he would do more of ? As soon as he became president, he named the exact Cabinet that his predecessor had. Portfolios may have changed, but it was Jagdeo wine in Jagdeo bottles. It was a shameless admission by Mr. Ramotar that he was not interested in new leadership and fresh minds. The only positive thing about Mr. Ramotar in that Cabinet continuity is that he was honest, in that he admitted that he couldn’t go beyond Mr. Jagdeo’s landscape.
Most leaders would have included a fresh face knowing that the new kid would not have made a difference. But even in this basic thinking, Mr. Ramotar was deficient. Even elementary rules of politics, Mr. Ramotar doesn’t understand. Now he has virtually jeopardized his presidency by suspending a duly elected Parliament in which his party has the minority of seats.
It must be noted that three years into his presidency there is yet to be a Minister of Trade. The Minister of Housing, Irfaan Ali, is still acting in that capacity. In a country that produces more sycophants and slaves than tea in China, why can’t Ramotar find a Trade Minister? Something is wrong here.
Is it possible that Ali told him he wants the job but in order not to make it look bad since he, Ali, already has another Ministry, Ramotar must continue to say that he, Ali, is acting Minister of Trade? The harsh reality is that you cannot put anything past Mr. Ramotar.
Since naming his Cabinet, Mr. Ramotar has lived in the shadow of some of his Ministers, which indicates that he is a de facto president that is happy to have a low profile and doesn’t care to do hard work.
It is not that these Ministers are impertinent and want to be in the limelight so they overshadow their leader. It is because they know that Mr. Ramotar himself doesn’t want to have a public profile and is happy with his ceremonies and foreign trips. So they tell themselves that they are going to run the country.
Shortly after he became President, the most racist statement in our post-colonial period was put in print by a governmental organization. I am not even sure that during the intense political and ethnic competition in the sixties was such a show of racist bigotry ever made public. The Chronicle poured out a bottle of racist poison for which Mr. Ramotar is yet to apologize, since he was and is the direct boss of the Chronicle through his portfolio as Minister of Information.
In an editorial, the Chronicle saw African youths as having a congenital hatred for East Indians, which was generated by the previous African generation and passed on to them. According to the Chronicle, this bigotry is acted out in the application of violence and commission of robberies against East Indians. It was sick, evil and unbelievable.
But there was another morbid dimension in that atrocity. The woman who wrote the editorial continues to write Chronicle editorials and continues to function as a consultant in the Office of the President.
In a country where young African men and women dominate the army, police, public service, fire and prison services and the public infrastructure sector, it is incredible that President Ramotar escaped without any national outpouring of street protests.
As 2012 moved into 2013, nothing even remotely resembling the unique came from the mind of Mr. Ramotar. On the contrary, Mr. Ramotar became more barefaced in refusing to act against corruption when the evidence was there.
He had no excuse. He couldn’t cry; “show me the proof.” The proof was there that corruption swallowed up the top layer of the NCN management. To date, Mr. Ramotar has most truculently refused to act on the findings of corruption at NCN, and makes a mockery of himself by his incessant parroting to the press, “I haven’t had time to look at it (the report) as yet.
As 2014 neared its closing moments, Mr. Ramotar’s gross blundering and comical ineptness reached limitless levels with the proroguing of Parliament. Only an idiotic nation would allow Mr. Ramotar to continue in power after his assault on Parliament.

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Ramotar has committed political hara-kiri

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