If the PPP returns, this is what it will do

May 21, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I seriously doubt the PPP will return to power in 2020. But the essence of life consists of countless nuances, one of which is the unpredictable which rests on the probability and possibility of the impossible becoming reality. Like love, hate, war, friendship, life is also about the miraculous, the unforeseen, the irrational.
Let us assume for some esoteric, inscrutable reason the PPP wins either with Jagdeo as president or Jagdeo as the Rasputin behind the throne. Some unpalatable, insufferable changes will be heaped on this nation. It is for this reason the present configuration of the PPP should be rejected by the people of Guyana and the world. I predict the following changes.
Even before the ink is dried on the presidential swearing ceremony, Khurshid Sattaur will return to head the GRA. It is a key position in the state edifice. The GRA is also the feeding trough of many dethroned billionaires to whom the present PPP mandarins owe countless favours.
They will feel that the PPP controlled state has to reverse the losses they have suffered under the post 2015 government and they will want some form of protection from the GRA’s professional operations.
Sattaur, who worked closely with the previous dispensation and had built up an enduring relation with it, will become almost indispensible. The Jagdeo/Sattaur combination will become a formidable vehicle. The relentless pressure from a Sattaur controlled GRA will transform Guyana into a field of ubiquitous orbiting that exceeded anything we saw during the fifteen- year-old rule of Jagdeo himself.
There is a Jagdeoite cabal in the PPP hierarchy that is steeped in uncouth ways, of which Bibi Shadick stands out. If the PPP wins, Shadick will move from GECOM into the heartland of power. The PPP loves her crass deportment. The PPP will let her loose on the Guyanese people in that she will be given an important ministry.
If there are only two parties contesting power in 2020 – the PPP and a party that says Donald Trump is the greatest human on earth and it will follow Trump’s vision for Guyana if elected, once BIbi Shadick is a PPP candidate, I will vote for the local Trump party.
Without a doubt, there will be the return of Kwame McCoy. Jagdeo likes McCoy because of the particular sphere to which they both belong. McCoy will be elevated. He will become the director of public information. The PPP and Jagdeo know that McCoy will not change his ways so the country can expect a continuation and expansion of his rough, unvarnished persona. But the PPP will want him to be like what he naturally is. This kind of culture is the only one Jagdeo is happy in.
Make no mistake, certain business people that Jagdeo was close to over the fifteen years he ruled Guyana will have pyrotechnic concessions. Some names are obvious – Buddy Shivraj, Eddie Boyer, Brian James among others. But it is Bobby Ramroop who will become coterminous with the presidency. He is a very special friend of Jagdeo and Jagdeo will want to show Guyana that Ramroop cannot be kept down.
Some anticipated changes will not happen once Jagdeo is president or is the invisible hand behind the throne. Jagdeo will not make Nandlall the Attorney-General. Jagdeo will not be comfortable with a bright and ambitious person like Nandlall. You may dislike Nandlall for whatever valid reason you have but Anil Nandlall is very competent as a forensic lawyer. My feeling is that Jagdeo thinks he will overshadow him and Anil naturally will not shun the limelight.
I suspect Jagdeo will get rid of the old guard even if their campaign assisted the return of the PPP. Definitely Clement Rohee will become a footnote if the PPP wins because Jagdeo does not trust him after the imbroglio over the position of General-Secretary. Rohee resented and still does, the way he lost that position.
Rohee, Teixeira and Komal Chand will become victims of Jagdeo’s real “politik”. He will not want them in the corridors of power because he knows that they have some claim to the PPP brand, which they will use to make themselves relevant.
These three troglodytes Jagdeo will cast aside also because he will want a Cabinet of faces that he can twist and shape like the clay kids use to make things in play school.
Make no mistake about it; Jagdeo will choose a Cabinet and a school of public sector heads that will be totally subservient to him. If there are civil society actors who think a returned Jagdeo will reach out to them, they better stop dreaming.

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