What is the relationship between Donald Ramotar and Irfaan Ali?

Dec 23, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

What has President Donald Ramotar done in three years? The first answer is he has been holding his own Academy Awards ceremony. For three years Irfaan Ali has been acting as the Minister of Trade and Tourism (for a stink, “dutty,” horrible dirty country to have a Tourism Ministry must be an insult to modern day civilization).
It is beyond belief that Ramotar cannot find a person to be the Minister of Trade. And to think of it, the media has allowed him to get away with this asininity; he is still to be asked why Ali has been acting for three years in which time Ramotar has awarded him an Oscar. When one thinks of all the possible candidates, then Ramotar should be pressed on why he continues with this imbecility.
Take the Shaun Samaroo. Within weeks of praising the Stabroek News as a valued Guyana institution, writing as a Stabroek News columnist, Samaroo in a Chronicle column last Friday observed that “the Stabroek News and Kaieteur News, lack serious insight into the society’s body politic, and more and more engage in petty, crass, biased, prejudiced and incompetent reporting and editorializing, in fact, the average citizen ignores the newspapers, except to devour gossip and gore.”
This journalist (who is now writing for GINA) went on to praise Ramotar as a shining President. For months now Samaroo has been begging for a top job. Well one is available – the Minister of Trade and Tourism.
What about the calypsonian Dave Martins? Mr. Ramotar has a supporter in Mr. Martins. Martins wrote in the Stabroek News that he doesn’t understand why Guyanese keep carping on corruption, begging in the streets and race bias. He sees these things in places like Canada and the US. Mr. Martins is now a tourism ambassador. He is an experienced gentleman who has a business at the Ogle airport. I would think he has more standing in Guyana than a mediocre performer like Irfaan Ali.
Does Ramesh Dookoo of the Private Sector Commission want the job? He is as sycophantic as any fanatical PPP supporter who would die for the PPP. Dookoo works at Banks DIH where he must have gathered some knowledge about business, so he would be qualified. Or could it be that the ministerial pay must be less than what he gets at Banks DIH?
One of the most obvious candidates would be “Kit” Nascimento. He is also in the Private Sector Commission (never knew Nascimento owned any serious commercial entity but then again the circus is a business). Nascimento is in his mid-eighties therefore there is nuff experience there. Bobby Ramroop should have a talk with Ramotar about consideration for Nascimento.
It was Nascimento who wrote that the “Beacon of Truth”, the Guyana Times, is the New York Times of Guyana. The “Beacon of Truth” is the “Beacon of Dirt” and the Guyana Times is not the New York Times of Guyana but the Bharrat Jagdeo Times of Guyana.
Ramotar, to my mind, is not intellectually developed at all (I honestly, most sincerely, feel in my analytical mind that Donald Ramotar is the poorest Head of Government ever to emerge in the English-speaking West Indies) so many eligible choices will naturally elude him. But can’t some of the other folks in the PPP suggest some names to Ramotar?
If Ramotar cannot secure the services of a Guyanese from inside the country or from the diaspora to serve as the Minister of Trade, then it is an open admission by the PPP leadership that Guyana is a barren place that has failed and in which there can be no future. I would like to see a counter-argument. The fact is graphic and simple – for three years now, the PPP leadership cannot identify a Minister of Trade
Suppose there is an alternative explanation. There is a Minister for Culture and Sports. There is one for Social Services. Another for the Finance Ministry. Yet another for Education. There is one for Labour. Yet another for Agriculture. Even the mining industry has a Minister. What is so complex about Trade and Tourism that finding a candidate is impossible?
The answer is that Mr. Ramotar does not want a Minister of Trade and Tourism. He prefers to give Irfaan Ali an Oscar for acting for so long. This raises the question as to why. What is the relationship between Ramotar and Ali?

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What is the relationship between Donald Ramotar and Irfaan Ali?

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