An unsuccessful politician at Success

Dec 17, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Maybe, and I stress, maybe, this country has not produced a mindset that is exasperatingly unacceptable as the collective psyche of the PPP. Has this country produced another leader with the type of character as Bharrat Jagdeo?
Mr. Jagdeo was in the village of Success last week, and what he told his audience was beyond belief. Did they believe this man whose presidency, compared to the other two long-reigning presidents- Burnham and Jagan – was deploringly unsuccessful?
How could someone, with that kind of unsuccessful career go to the East Coast and talk down to his supporters like that? Without wanting to be insulting to the villagers of Success, for them to swallow the nonsense, that utter mumbo-jumbo that Jagdeo dished out, makes them unworthy to be part of the 21st century.
First, Mr. Jagdeo in enumerating the reasons for the PPP’s loss of power completely exonerated his policies, behaviour and output for the long years of his domination of the State.
He accused the PPP membership of becoming too arrogant. One cannot help but wonder what kind of people was Jagdeo speaking to; certainly not those who lived under his administration. To go to a village and tell your hosts that the PPP lost the election because they, the supporters, became too arrogant is moral depravity of the worst kind. Mr. Jagdeo was telling these ordinary folks that they were the fault and failed to mention even one of the pompous mandarins that sat on top of the PPP’s hierarchy when it was in power.
If ever a political entity produced a politician that is arrogant stretching back from the 1940s when the first political party – the Political Affairs Committee – was born, it is Clement Rohee. If there is anything about Clement Rohee that is detectable by even the blind is his arrogance. From the time I became a teenager, I would say the most arrogant political activist I have ever met in my entire life is Clement Rohee.
I don’t have to think even for a second to choose number two. It is Charles Ramson Senior. I would contend that the hubris and hauteur of these two men exceeded anything that this country saw even in the colonial era.
Surely, the Governor would have been elitist and stand-offish, but nothing matching the conceited air of Rohee and Ramson. In fact, the man, who represented the white plantocracy; who symbolized the hegemony of the Booker Empire in this country, Sir Jock Campbell had a modesty about him that was unbelievable.
Surely, the people of Success couldn’t be so stupid to believe that the PPP activists around the county became too arrogant and that caused the election loss. They must know that the PPP was defeated because the pomposity of power became the pomposity of the mind, and Jagdeo was no exception to this cultism
There was no mention by Mr. Jagdeo of the hubris and hauteur of Robeson Benn. I saw for myself, Mr. Benn walked into Kaieteur News to berate the editorial staff over the way it carried a news item about his son’s arrest by the police. Ask Mr. Adam Harris if he did not have to restrain me. There was no way I would have allowed Benn to get away with that; maybe in his office or his home, but not at the Kaieteur News.
Benn walked in to the NCN studios and ordered the operator to cease playing a calypso critical of the PPP Government. Benn now sits as a GECOM Commissioner where he will get a lesson known as “monkey knows which limb to jump on.” Jagdeo as President virtually let loose his Patrice Lumumba University fellow student, Nirmal Rekha on the Guyanese people. Yet Mr. Jagdeo has the temerity to lecture the villagers of Success on arrogance in politics.
Secondly, Mr. Jagdeo told his audience that PPP supporters lost touch with the party “bases” (his word). If anyone lost touch with the grassroots of the PPP membership it was its hierarchy on top of which sat President Jagdeo. It was Jagdeo who employed VSO volunteers in Guyana at the Office of the President and each one earned more than a million dollars a month. Where were his grassroots’ connections to his party when he was dishing out this largesse? Did the grassroots in the PPP benefit?
Mr. Jagdeo rounded off his chastisement of his party supporters at Success by advising them that if the PPP is to regain power, it has to restructure and reform itself. Jagdeo avoided the word, “democratize.” The PPP perhaps, is the only party in the world that doesn’t elect its leader directly from its delegates or membership.

Latest News

An unsuccessful politician at Success

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show | November, 20th, 2024

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Guyana Beverages Inc. partners with GFF for Maid Marian Wheat Up...

GFF provides support to EBFA U14 Boys’ League

Athletics scores big at NSC National Sports

St. Theresa’s Primary triumph in Republic Bank...

Wakenaam Masters to face Parika Defenders in T20...

Bakewell supports Kashif and Shanghai Futsal...

Features/Columnists

Fastest growing economy and an empty stadium

Rising Gun Crimes in the Caribbean: Urgent Action required by all

The fight for power, then where to?

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]

An unsuccessful politician at Success

Share this:

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show | November, 20th, 2024

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Features/Columnists

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]