Demystifying the mysteries of dictatorship

Jun 27, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Too many depravities of the Jagdeo/Ramotar period of the presidency appear as acts that we will never know the reason for. Many political observers just say, “Because deh daam stupid.” You hear that all the time when you bring up some really unnecessary bad things the PPP leaders did that made them look terrible and caused them to lose support.
They may have been damn stupid alright but we still have to answer why the balance sheet of horrors kept expanding. Is there a single explanation or a number of factors were at work? I will offer my analysis below after looking at some of these “mysteries.”
Varshnie Singh said that President Jagdeo refused to let her have a car for her charity work after the common law marriage broke down. She described how he intervened to prevent his friends in business when they offered office space and a car. You have to look hard to find another situation like this in another country. I doubt you will find the parallel.
The Varshnie Singh accusations against President Jagdeo have definitely contributed to the national dislike for this man. Let me digress a tiny bit to opine that East Indians increased their votes for the PPP in the 2015 elections not because of the personality of Jagdeo, but because of the hate message Jagdeo delivered they felt was also the sermon of the PPP – African Guyanese will kill Indians if APNU wins. Mr. Jagdeo is not a figure of admiration among Indians.
Any other Prime Minister or President would have done the commonsensical thing and see that his wife was as comfortable so she wouldn’t run to the press. In any case why bother to deny her a car? From her press release, Ms. Singh painted a tale of a man who didn’t care about his actions.
If you accept that the fifteen years of Jagdeo/Ramotar rule was punctuated by psychotic mysteries then “Killamaan” is the biggest enigma in Guyanese life since the Dutch came here. It is my deeply held belief that “Killamaan” would not have been tolerated in another country on the map.
Who was “Killaman”? Why did he have Teflon quality? Why after one illegal act after another (and there were several), did “Killamaan” stay in his job?
It must be made clear that the “Fip” Motilall imbroglio, NCN corruption case, Nirmal Rehka scandal, NICIL/Marriot madness, airstrip insanity in Wakenaam and Leguan, four-lane Timehri airport road, Specialty hospital and dozens more like them are not mysteries of the PPP Government. Not in the least.
These outrageous stories are quite simple to understand because they exist all over the world. They involved corruption where public office holders enriched themselves. The four lane road from the Timehri turn to the airport can easily be called a pure act of ignorance.
Guyana does not have even five percent of the vehicular traffic that leaves the Barbados airport each day to warrant that humongous expenditure on a road in a country where there are hardly three flights a day from the Timehri airport. The road was built because it offered enormous scope for enrichment by politicians.
The mysteries of the PPP Government have to do with things that were totally unnecessary and should not have been tolerated. A Minister couldn’t keep his hands off the young girls who worked under him. He was never disciplined. He resigned, ended up in the office of the party and was a lead person in the PPP’s election campaign. A foreigner came from abroad to take up an appointment in the public sector. His total remuneration including electricity, water, gardener and entertainment bills plus a free middle upper class house was $1.8 million.
Yet the man took another job in another section of the public sector bringing his total earnings to $3million a month. This was exposed in the press. No one asked him why he couldn’t concentrate on his complex, burdensome job that he was brought to Guyana to deal with in the first place.
It was obvious to the PPP leadership that the man could not and should have done two jobs. But he was allowed to. Why pay Shaun Samaroo $16 million when many PPP loyalists over the long years could have done the exact project?
The answer for these inscrutabilities lies in one explanation. After long incumbency, hubris, hauteur and invincibility destroyed the collective will and mind of the PPP. At the mental level, the PPP had absolutely no interest in arresting the immoral descent of its mandarins.
The hierarchical leaders simply didn’t care who did what to whom, when and where.

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Demystifying the mysteries of dictatorship

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