Jagdeo: The politics of morbidity, the morbidity of politics

Jan 23, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Bharrat Jagdeo is a funny little fellow; an amusing parvenu, a half-baked dilettante, a laughable harlequin. Here is the proof. These are the words of a man who ruled Guyana for twelve years as de jure president and three years as de facto president:
“We’re hoping that we can work more to get more Afro-Guyanese into the PPP, because our support is predominantly Indo-Guyanese and a lot of Amerindians… maybe 70 percent.
So we have to do harder work in the Afro-Guyanese communities, to make sure more people come into the Party, so that the Party looks like Guyana.”
“And we’re making a serious effort to do this, because we genuinely believe that’s the only way forward.
Guyana can only move forward and realise all of its potential if everybody is included. So yes, we have seen more people.”
Political parties when in power use patronage to attract supporters. There hasn’t been a ruler that did not follow that pattern. It is a commonsensical road in politics.
It hardly needs explanation. If your farming population is large and you implement policies to favour them why then would they hate you?
On the contrary, they would love you and vote for you. So Mr. Jagdeo wants to have more African-Guyanese in his party. The obvious question is; what did his rule do for African Guyanese for the fifteen years he had power? That question is easy to answer. He used his power to alienate Black people.
President Jagdeo’s right hand man, Roger Luncheon, told the court in Jagdeo’s libel writ against me that no African Guyanese at the time was qualified to be a diplomat.
When the researcher for the Ethnic Relations Commission was investigating whether there was an ethnic imbalance in the granting of state scholarships, the Ministry of the Public Service refused to release the data.
No African Guyanese organisation supported the erection on the old seawall road off Carifesta Avenue, the monument to commemorate the 1823 slave rebellion.
The Jagdeo/Ramotar combination rejected the wishes of every (not a majority but all) African organisation to site the monument on Parade Ground where the captured slaves were tortured, mutilated and executed.
That insensitivity remains one of the ugliest manifestations of ethnic contempt in the history of Guyana.
When Jagdeo and Ramotar were in power, a certain Indian woman wrote what is regarded as the most venomous form of racist bitterness in an editorial of a newspaper.
In a Chronicle editorial, she stated that African youths have been socialised from early childhood to hate East Indians and that is why they rob and kill them.
The lady at the time was a staff member in the hard news section of the Chronicle.
She was never sanctioned by Jagdeo or Ramotar. Both Jagdeo and Ramotar did not utter one word of condemnation. This lady currently works in the Office of the Opposition Leader.
In the 80s television show Sanford and Son, the main character, Fred Sanford, would look up to the skies, put his hand to his chest and speak to his wife; “Elizabeth, this is the big one, I am coming to join you”.
He speaks to his dead wife in heaven telling her the big one will kill him, meaning the biggest heart attack is coming.
He makes that exclamation whenever something unpleasantly painful happens to him. Readers will now have to emulate Sanford because this following text about Jagdeo is the big one that will attack your heart.
During the 2015 election campaign, Jagdeo told PPP supporters that if APNU wins the elections, their homes will be invaded, they will be robbed, raped and murdered.
Obviously, any school boy knows the racial basis on that statement. So what resources does the PPP have to attract African Guyanese? Obviously, the resources were bountiful, (to use a Rastafari term) when Jagdeo was in control from 1999 to April 2015. But he didn’t use state resources to attract African Guyanese. In fact, African Guyanese rejected Jagdeo and Ramotar at the polls in 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2015.
Jagdeo concluded his observation by saying that he wants the PPP to look like Guyana, meaning an ethnically diverse organisation.
That is a strange thing to say. The PPP never had an African leader in its 65 years of existence and never had even twenty percent African representation in its hierarchy.
Then came poor Sam Hinds. When President Jagan died in 1997, Sam Hinds, a Black man, became President.
But the PPP insisted he give up the presidency. Janet Jagan succeeded him. When Janet took ill, she overlooked Sam and gave Jagdeo the presidency.

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Jagdeo: The politics of morbidity, the morbidity of politics

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