The image of fools and failures seated at a table

Aug 12, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There is a photograph in the newspapers of a group of PPP leaders sitting in front of a table. On the list was Donald Ramotar- a politician who twice contested national elections and failed to win a majority. He led a minority presidency from January 2012 to April 2015 and was commonly referred to in journalism and political commentary as Medvedev, meaning a surrogate of Bharrat Jagdeo, as President Dmitry Medvedev was of Vladimir Putin.
Ramotar cannot point to any form of success, however tiny, when he was President for three years and four months. His sordid record becomes even uglier when one considers that he was a Board member of GuySuCo during which time GuySuCo became a failure. Next to Ramotar was Clement Rohee, a Cabinet Minister for just about 23 years. One of the most ridiculous figures ever to emerge in politics anywhere in the world, Rohee as Minister, Parliamentarian, and now leader of a political party, cuts a figure of derision and fun.
In what can only be described as unimaginable caricature, Rohee utters the most comical sentences each time he opens his mouth at public forums. Explaining to his fellow Guyanese why he is eligible to run for the presidency, Rohee says after all, “goat ain’t bite meh.” Responding two weeks ago to media questions about threats to a foreign diplomat by a PPP executive, he said he would not comment because “what’s in the cup stays in the cup.” As night follows day, until his career is over, Rohee will remind the world of what a disaster his party, the PPP, is.
To the right of Jagdeo was Roger Luncheon. He held the position of Secretary to the Cabinet for almost 23 years and held the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors for the NIS for the same length of time. Jagdeo said a few weeks ago, when asked about the investment of billions of NIS funds into the Berbice Bridge Company, that as President, he had nothing to do with that decision. So was it Luncheon? Five billion dollars of NIS money vanished into thin air because it was invested in CLICO which collapsed. Yet this failure of a politician was seated at a table giving a lecture to the people of this country.
As a citizen of this land I say to Luncheon, go to hell, my country does not want to hear anything from you.
To the left of Jagdeo was a funny human being named Ramon Gaskin. One doesn’t know what his first name is. He says it is Raymond, then, in the same breath he says it is Ramon. Ramon Raymond Gaskin, who trained at Patrice Lumumba University – the same one Jagdeo attended in the now defunct USSR -became the Chairman of the Guyana Electricity Corporation (now known as GPL) when the PPP came to power in 1992) and special Advisor to the Minister of Finance, Bharrat Jagdeo.
During his rampage against public servants at GPL, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under President Cheddi Jagan and Finance Minister Jagdeo, Gaskin earned the nickname, “Rambo.” More public servants were dismissed under “Rambo” than at any other time in the history of this country. Testifying in libel trials for Dr. Walter Ramsahoye against this newspaper on two occasions, “Rambo gave his age as 74. At age 74, maybe it is time, Rambo returns to Canada, where he has citizenship, to live out the rest of his life.
The centrepiece at the table was Bharrat Jagdeo. The occasion was a public lecture by these men held at the Sleep-In hotel on Brickdam where as President, Mr. Ramotar, frequented the place every Friday evening singing karaoke. I wondered if in his repertoire, was the famous Burt Bacharach wonder hit, “Any Day Now” made famous by Rhythm and Blues singer, Chuck Jackson. There is a line from this song that goes like this.
“Then my wild beautiful bird
You would have flown
Any day now
I’d be all alone.”
Guyana flew away from Ramotar and the PPP since 2011, never to be possessed anymore. So Ramotar spends his lonely time writing letters to the newspapers. The supposed star of the lecture was Bharrat Jagdeo. Any decent human looking at that photograph must ask him/herself what can this man who ran Guyana for twelve years tell the people of Guyana. The men at the table went to Sleep-In to lecture because, unlike most other countries in the world, they seem free to walk and talk despite a mountain of troubling evidence against them (minus “Rambo”). But the walls are closing in.

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