They have been morbidly barefaced since May 2015

Jun 28, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

If you read the things PPP leaders write each day, each week in all the four dailies, then you have to know that they are directing their remarks to their converted supporters just to ensure that these people keep the faith with the PPP. That is all. That is what the barefaced denials in their incessant letters to the press are all about.
Jagdeo came to power in August 1999. The PPP lost power in May 2015. In that period so many things happened that threatened the very existence of this country but none of these ugly, grotesque scars of the PPP are ever mentioned. And when PPP leaders do touch on them, the barefacedness is literally morbid.
Bharrat Jagdeo, in charge of Guyana for fifteen years, issued a statement this week that on the surface would get a large percentage of the population extremely angry. But Jagdeo is pandering to his constituencies.
He said he has done more as president for African Guyanese than any PNC government, past or present. Jagdeo himself doesn’t believe that. PPP leaders themselves do not believe it. So why did he say it? It is important to understand why he uttered such an asinine statement. It is for the same reason he said what he said about NIS investment in the Berbice Bridge construction.
Bharrat Jagdeo was president when NIS funds were invested in the bridge. At a press conference last year, Jagdeo said he did not know about the NIS investment. His thinking is understandable, but abominable. Untold numbers of rural proletarians who have voted for the PPP since 1957 stand to lose their pension if the NIS collapses. So Jagdeo just lied. And he lied to make sure sugar workers believe him.
In fact, jeopardizing the NIS future in my opinion constitutes a criminal offence and in many other countries where the constitution allows for prosecution for the abuse of power, he would have been prosecuted.
This man did the unthinkable. He took billions of dollars from the NIS and invested it in the building of the Berbice Bridge. To date, NIS is still to recover its investment. Yet this man has the temerity to say that he did not know about the money the NIS put into the bridge.
It was Jagdeo’s decision; no one else. He took billions of dollars from the NIS and put it into CLICO. CLICO collapsed and left the fulcrums of the NIS shaking. In 2013 and 2014, the annual report of the NIS indicated that it was paying out more than it was receiving. To play with the pension of older citizens who worked the greater part of their lives only to find their pension may not be forthcoming is a crime against humanity.
We come now to the outrageous remark that as president, he did more for African Guyanese than the leaders of the PNC when those PNC leaders were in power. If any policy of Jagdeo can be used to indict him for racism, it was his position on the location of the monument to the slave rebellion of 1822.
It was at that very site the slaves were tortured and executed. Not one Guyanese organization from any of our ethnic mosaic uttered one word in rejection of the site of Parade Ground. Other ethnic groups were not interested. They saw it as the business of African Guyanese. Not one African group supported the government in its decision to put the monument on the old seawall road. It was a crass, cultural insult to the African people of Guyana.
One should be careful how one rejects Jagdeo’s statement of empowering Black people. You have to read between the lines. What Jagdeo meant is that the Black Guyanese he chose to empower, he dealt nicely with them. He patronized them wonderfully. Remember his choices, not Black people in general.
One of his Black Ministers is before the courts on a serious charge of fraud involving hundreds of millions of dollars.
Another Black Guyanese, Odinga Lumumba, is the owner of large tracts of land. Another Black Guyanese, James Rose, was appointed Vice Chancellor of UG. Yet another Black Guyanese, Dr. Compton Bourne, was made Chancellor of UG and awarded a plot of land at Pradoville 2.
Another Black Guyanese, Henry Greene, was appointed Commissioner of Police against the advice of the US Government. Two Black Guyanese lawyers were paid handsomely to argue a case in front of Acting Chief Justice Ian Chang challenging presidential term limit. In other words, what Jagdeo means is that he was generous in his Black tokenism.

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