The pontific, poignant point of Raphael Trotman

Jan 24, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

It has been a long time since I have applauded a ruling politician on his/her anger in response to criticism arising from society. At the last AFC press conference, Raphael Trotman was in full swing. And I applaud the way he confronted a manifestation of hypocrisy in Guyana.
I have criticized Trotman in the past, and will be quite willing to do so once he falters, but at the last AFC press conference, I enjoyed his emotional outburst, because I think it was justified.
We will come to the AFC leader’s semantics below but first, a relevant point about Mark Benschop. I was at Benschop’s house one evening when the police came to arrest him for broadcasting without a radio licence. Benschop’s son was home, and I recall he asked me to make some calls about his son’s welfare. That man defied the nasty monopoly of radio licences by the Jagdeo presidency and was harassed.
I remember two other incidents with Benschop in which he was made to suffer, and in the process his son was greatly discomforted. He was arrested and taken to Diamond police station, put on station bail, but on a matter of principle refused to pay the bail because doing so, he said, would be an acknowledgement of the police’s illegal act of arresting him. I was at the station and arranged bail for Benschop, telling him that President Jagdeo would be excessively delighted that he spends months at the station in the lockups.
The next occasion was when Kwame McCoy assaulted Benschop, but instead it was Benschop who was remanded at the Brickdam station lockups for attacking McCoy. During my friendship with Benschop, I heard countless silly condemnations of him. Nothing wrong with that, it comes with the territory. But it was the kind of people who were doing the mouthing-off. Many of them would have fainted if President Jagdeo had only given them a strong look.
Many of them would have peed in their trousers if a policeman had shouted at them. Many of them never lifted a finger or would ever lift a finger to help another human. Many of them would have locked themselves up in their homes and never emerged again, if a line was written about them by a powerful politician in the newspapers. Yet these people were attacking others who, in their quest to help the fellow Guyanese, had to endure the wrath of state power. Essentially this was the rage that caused Raphael Trotman to make his denunciations.
Trotman, as quoted in this newspaper said; “Come and speak to me if you are in the pit and fighting. But there are people who like to write. They sit at their computers all day and write epistles; they condemn you and write you off, but they are not bloodied.”
Here is the part where Trotman went on the rampage. I quote from Kaieteur News of January 19, 2018; “But I prefer to deal with those who are in the trenches and fighting and understand my cuts and bruises. Those are the ones I will respect and answer to. Some people never campaign, but they can tell you how to run a good campaign or government, but they don’t run anything more than their own offices”.
In my heart I could understand those sentiments of Raphael Trotman. I know an expatriate Guyanese who never campaigned in the 2015 election. After the coalition won, he asked to be made the CEO of GuySuCo. His crass opportunism was rejected. This fool, who never put a foot in the trenches, fights his opportunistic war against the APNU+AFC government from his computer.
I know how Trotman feels. I feel his pain.
I remember this gentleman, who spent the greater part of his life in the US, then came back to Guyana and all he did was write letters. He still does.
Remember Trotman’s words that they write epistles; I am absolutely positive he is one who Trotman is referring to. He condemns people who fought the Jagdeo regime and suffered persecution and prosecution. I came in front of his radar. He once observed in another newspaper that he knows businessmen who built my house for me and that I was a contaminated person.
I didn’t mind someone who fought in the trenches with me telling me that. My anger would have been diluted, but not these fools who will never step out and be counted. They will never hold a placard and don’t care to hold one. Trotman went on to add that they mouth-off from their offices. Some mouth-off with their keyboard only.

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The pontific, poignant point of Raphael Trotman

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