You could get a presidential slap and maybe a kick in 2015 for being stupid

Jan 03, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

This is the first issue of the New Year and naturally it should start with the analysis of the contents of 2014. But that can wait because in my column, prioritizing the Ramotar tape scandal (in my opinion this is a scandal) is of urgent national importance.
It simply defies the imagination how a nation can accept the continuation of top office holders who have committed the most sickening abominations that even in brutal military dictatorship they would be disciplined for less unbecoming conduct.
Name any authoritarian system in the world where a serving Attorney-General would not receive even a mild rebuke for telling a press conference, “When the press keep referring to a Minister who does illegal things I thought it was me you referring to because I is a man does do illegal things.” That man remained in office and his boss President Bharrat Jagdeo at the time, did not utter even one word of reprimand. It was expected of Jagdeo.
If ever a human being was unfit for any political office it was Bharrat Jagdeo. No wonder Guyana is living in sempiternal insanity. This country has to be an anthropological accident and a genetic mistake to have produced the rulers we have had since 1999.
President Ramotar has uttered not one word about what Anil Nandlall said in that recorded conversation with journalist Leonard Gildarie. The least you would expect a President to say is that; “if true, it needs investigating; if true I would be disappointed in Mr. Nandlall.” Even such a commonsensical utterance Mr. Ramotar is incapable of producing.
Mr. Ramotar has now jeapordized his moral leadership of the Cabinet, wider governmental structures, the security forces and the country as a whole by statements he made that are scurrilous, egregious, borders on moral incomprehensibility and indicates an appreciation for people with violent propensities.
There is no way a country should accept a President or Prime Minister yelling out to a member of an audience that if his colleague, the former President Jagdeo, was present, that former President would slap that person for saying the things he said about Jagdeo. Then he called the citizen a stupid person.
Now mind you, Mr. Ramotar was not taped expressing his feelings about the meeting to a select group of people after the event was over. Mr. Ramotar made his obnoxious remarks in an open forum. And in the same breath, he was criticizing opposition leaders. How can any politician be so inept? You go to a meeting, endorse an act of violence, yell out to a citizen, that he is stupid, then moments later, tell your audience of how terrible the people in the opposition are.
Is this the man the Guyanese people will re-elect as President in 2015? I hope not.
Now here is where the people that Mr. Ramotar has around him are as equally foolish. Mr. Ramotar’s incompetent subordinates explained that the man was heckling the President. Well, Mr. Ramotar has to be the most imbecilic politician in the world since the modern world began to confront a heckler. That is a Sisyphean task that only Mr. Ramotar can successfully complete as a politician in the entire world.
At public gatherings you do not answer a heckler. There are three ways you can handle the situation. First, like President Obama, you can respond and try to be explanatory. Second, you can ignore the person. Third, if it is overbearing the police normally intervene. But you never argue with a heckler. You never cuss down a heckler. It is a no-win situation. For a man sixty-five years of age and who has been in politics for over forty years, Mr. Ramotar hasn’t learnt anything about the nature of public politicking. Maybe he did learn something. At the 2013 Old Year’s Night party of the army, he was photographed back-balling with a woman. It was for me one of the most ridiculous images I have ever seen of a Guyanese politician. At the 2014 Old Year’s Night bash, he avoided that miasma.
I don’t believe the Amerindian man was a heckler. I don’t believe the Government’s description of him as drunk either. He is a teacher who appears to have some kind of political awareness about him and he used the occasion to ask questions. The teacher has also accused a presidential guard of slapping him. The guard will not be charged. It would be a waste of time and money to bring a private charge against him because the witnesses may get some slaps.

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You could get a presidential slap and maybe a kick in 2015 for being stupid

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