I didn’t believe in ghosts until now

Nov 04, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

If I tell you the things my mom told her children when we were growing up about ghosts (jumbies in local dialect) you would either start believing that jumbies do exist and are ubiquitous or my mother had the most uncontrollable imagination since human civilization emerged. My mom and dad and my siblings believe in supernatural things; my siblings believed my mom.
I was the last of seven children and grew up in the age of the hippies and was the only sibling that went beyond primary school so naturally I really didn’t care for those nocturnal horrors my mother indoctrinated us in. So do ghosts exist? I didn’t think so until I read the WPA press release in which the WPA accepted that the president acted in accordance with the constitution.
Who or what is the WPA? For years I have been asking this question. I got it wrong when in making that enquiry in one of these columns I stated that women’s right activist, Andaiye, was in the WPA leadership. She emailed to say she resigned from the WPA twenty years ago and would like me to correct that misconception. I did so in a subsequent column.
I am not concerned about the press release. I am curious about the leaders of the WPA. Who are they? Why don’t they speak publicly to the press or on camera? Why does the WPA exist in the sphere of press releases only? Take the AFC. Its Canadian group may have withdrawn from the party over the GECOM chairman controversy. Khemraj Ramjattan has spoken to the press on behalf of the AFC of the party’s acceptance of Mr. Granger’s action. There was no press release and citizens were not unaware of who was saying what on behalf of the AFC.
On a vital and sensitive matter that has created a whirlpool of controversy, the WPA issued a press release and to date no one from the leadership has faced the media. Let us try to ascertain who is in the WPA based on snippets of information. The most high profile face of the WPA is Dr. David Hinds. He is featured in the media almost weekly and the media always refer to his designation as “WPA executive member.”
During the little quarrel over the resignation of Dr. Roopnaraine, the public was informed that the WPA has a co-leadership structure with the dual authority of Roopnaraine and Clive Thomas. In the delegation that met the President over the contretemps with Roopnaraine was Thomas. In two press conferences since then, Dr. David Hinds was the front man. The co-leaders were not there.
Another well know face in the WPA leadership is Tacuma Ogunseye. One can say that Hinds, Ogunseye, Roopnaraine and Thomas are the top names in the WPA. Let’s go to the press release on the GECOM chairman.
Dr. David Hinds wrote; “The decision by the President represents another colossal failure on the part of our political leaderships. The President should have avoided making a unilateral decision. But while the decision is constitutionally sound, it is politically senseless.”
Tacuma Ogunseye, appearing on the WPA television programme “Walter Rodney Groundings” took the position that in an ethnically sensitive country like Guyana, the President should have avoided the direction of a unilateral appointment. There is not even one line, just one line in the WPA press release, that captures the sentiments of these two gentlemen yet these two personalities are known throughout Guyana to be the influential voices in the WPA.
One of the areas of politics in this land that continues to bother me is the WPA’s existence. Is there a ghost in the Cabinet and we mortals cannot see it? How can you have a multi-party government in a country and the population never sees the leaders of one of the parties talking to the media or the people in general? One of those leaders is not a shy person.
In fact he holds two highly placed positions in the land. He is the head of the assets recovery agency (SARA) that is a body with police power. He is the chairman of the board of the country’s largest state owned company, GuySuco.
He is a weekly columnist in another newspaper. Yet this gentleman – Clive Thomas- apart from being in the WPA delegation in July to meet with the president, does not meet with the press to discuss WPA’s politics. Roopnaraine hardly ever talks to the press. Does the WPA exist? Yes it does. It is a ghost. I now believe in the existence of ghosts.

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