Lifting off the tegument of Gail Teixeira’s tegurium

May 17, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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In my column of Tuesday, November 15, 2011, captioned, “I sat eight feet away from Gail Teixeira,” I described the behaviour of Gail Teixeira at a meeting of the Council of the University. Let me digress for a tiny moment and quote from the Stabroek News last week; “She (Teixeira) said that her entire youth in this country was fought and spent in that period where Walter Rodney and other comrades died for democracy in this country.” Well one thing is for sure, if Teixeira spent her youth in Guyana (she was born here), she certainly hasn’t lost her Canadian accent.
In that column of mine, I highlighted the arrogance and abuse of power by this aging Stalinist in the PPP. She had a list of lecturers she wanted fired from UG. My name was top of the list. She looked straight at the Vice-Chancellor whose visage was one of resignation and fatigue, and said; “Their contracts must be terminated.” That was the month of the general elections in 2011. Six weeks after, at the beginning of January 2012, my contract was terminated. Yet this aging PPP monarch that held Cabinet status for twenty-three years beginning from 1992 to 2015, could get up in the Parliament and talk about the days of Walter Rodney and the fight for democracy.
If Walter Rodney was alive when Gail Teixeira and the Norman Bates of the PPP ruled this land, he would have sought to remove them. Rodney would have been so enraged at the descent into real fascism from 1999 onwards, that one can say absolutely that there would have been a volcano of Rodneyite activism against the depraved rule of the PPP.
When I read those words about her youthful days fighting for democracy I wanted to throw up. When Teixeira produced her list of victims to the Vice-Chancellor, Teixeira and her Jagdeoite acolytes had already destroyed democracy.
Remove the roof of the PPP’s sarcophagus and peep inside and you’ll see victims that a million philosophical geniuses could not have predicted or imagined would have been there after a youthful Gail Teixeira and her comrades came to power. Buried in that graveyard of dictatorship are Ronald Waddell, Courtney Crum-Ewing and ‘Sash’ Sawh. Scratch the walls of the PPP’s gulags and you’ll see the names of Mark Benschop, Oliver Hinckson, Bruce and Carol Ann-Munroe, Leonard Wharton and many more, including this columnist.
Teixeira remembers the days of fighting for democracy in the seventies. One must ask her what the shape of her memory is like in the 21st century. Here are the words of Teixeira taken from the newspaper, that infuriate you because you know you are looking at the morbid hypocrisy of Teixeira; “For the better of our country, the better of the police force, the better of the GDF, the better investigation of crime. Doesn’t the honourable member want that from Public Security?”
Which better country? The one that Teixeira and Jagdeo and company ruined? Which better police force? The one that Teixeira and Rohee reduced to a Faustian conspiracy? The very police force that tortured an underage boy and burnt his reproductive parts? And to fool the world, Teixeira travelled to Switzerland in May 2010 and told the UN Human Rights Council that her government compensated the little fellow when he was not (for an exposure of this deception, see the Stabroek News of May 21, 2010.) Which police force? The one that tortured accused people and when Teixeira’s colleague, Home Affairs Minister, Clement Rohee was asked about this, told reporters; “I have so much to think about and you asking me about torture.”
Which better investigation of crime is Teixeira talking about? Crime investigation under the tenure of Teixeira was reduced to donkey play. Between 1993 and 2009, 449 deaths due to assassinations, executions, and extra-judicial violence have been recorded. Less than five percent have been investigated. In 2005, Gail Teixeira was Minister of Home Affairs. Would she care to say how many of those murders were investigated and brought to conclusion under her watch and during the reign of her successors in the Home Affairs portfolio?
Someone ought to advise this lady that the brother-in-law of ‘Sash’ Shaw had appealed to the Canadian Government for an official probe into his death. This very man has accused the state, under the presidency of Jagdeo, of being involved in Shaw’s murder. It is pathetic and downright sickening that a young Teixeira in the seventies became one of the most powerful leaders in Government after 1992, and her period of domination, along with her fellow PPP leaders, constitutes the most undemocratic in the history of Guyana.

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