Khemraj Ramjattan: life’s bitter irony

Mar 05, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

What I am about to write in the next few lines journalists would say is either an exaggeration or a subjective observation. Throughout my long years of social activism, I found Khemraj Ramajattan to be the politician in government most open to talking to the press and this covers the pro-government media, hostile journalists and the independent press. I say most unambiguously; Ramjattan is the ruling politician I found most accessible to the media throughout the history of Guyana.
I do not know the reason for this attitude of his. It could be that he feels that the public needs to know and his role is to tell them. Or he is so full of self-confidence that he thinks he can handle any journalist. Or he feels that the press and politicians need to gel. I never studied the reason for this approach of Ramjattan. I am not interested in finding out. What I know is that he is more willing to speak to the media anytime of the day even at his home than any other politician I have known throughout my media career. I have given journalists Ramjattan’s cell number and landline and they have called him at his home and he, as far as I know, never turned them down.
A journalist, Brushell Blackman asked me for his number, and when he called it, Khemraj answered and said he was in London, England but gave him the interview, there and then. Ramjattan’s predecessor, Clement Rohee once told Dale Andrews of this newspaper, “why are you calling me at my home, I don’t speak to reporters from my home.”
It was therefore a bitter irony that of all the serving ministers in recent memory, he was the one to be accused of using expletives to a journalist. Life is indeed ironic. When I read that he committed such an act I was really frustrated. It should not have been him. From Independence in 1966 up to 2018, ruling politicians, top business officials and eminent public sectors managers who think they are brighter than Einstein and who think they can handle any situation at anytime, have hidden under the cover of their secretary.
In Guyana, banking and insurance bosses are afraid of the press more than an Ebola outbreak. Take it from me; I have been in this business since 1988. Do you know when we, in the media who write about the news and then become the news, we run from interviews. I have seen big names in the media evade journalists from other media houses who wanted to question them. Readers would be surprised to know who some of them are. Ramjattan does not operate like that. Indeed life is ironic and it was a bitter one to find him in the situation he found himself.
How he handles the press from hereon would be interesting. It is possible he will walk the mundane avenue and run from the press as politicians like him have been doing for the past sixty years in Guyana? I hope he does not do that. Guyana needs politicians that can break from the silly, dehumanizing, anachronistic political culture that has been destroying this resourcefully rich land the past sixty years. Not that Khemraj belong to a new political culture; he certainly does not. But his approach to the media is one I have admired him for since he became a minister.
So how did he get into that unacceptable situation where he had to cuss a journalist who was asking him for a comment? I will put it down to inexperience in politics. With the exception of Nagamootoo (who has turned out to be the biggest disappointment in the entire AFC+APNU leadership), the President and his ministers are inexperienced power holders. Amna Ally has been around a long time but not as a Cabinet minister. The same can be said of Winston Jordan. There is, Carl Greenidge of course, who has exposure to Cabinet status and has the relevant experience.
There is strategy of handling a journalist whose questions you do not want to answer. It is as old as time itself. I am simply flabbergasted that such a hackneyed old road, Khemraj does not know about. Keep walking to your office or your car or the building or event you are going to and continue to say; “no comment.” Do not lose your temper. If you do not want to say, “no comment” then stay silent as a lamb. This is a worldwide approach and you see it everyday on television. Try it Khemraj; it will stop you from cussing out.

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