The convenient soul of Moses Nagamootoo

Aug 13, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

When Moses Nagamootoo, yesterday, wrote in the Sunday Chronicle (in which he, Nagamootoo writes a weekly political column but David Hinds and Lincoln Lewis are prevented from so doing) that he was disappointed to read that I wrote that there were few sittings of the House in 2018, I felt another tinge of sadness for my country.
The convenient soul of the human is one of the line faults and fault lines of civilization. The convenient soul of the human is one we see billions of times maybe each month or year in our existence in this world.
Here is a simplified definition of the convenient soul. We lament what others do to us, our families, relatives and friends but we are so brutish, bestial and uncivilized that we cannot even momentarily conceive the harm we do to others.
We hurt, victimize, injure and kill others and by some sick logic we cannot see that is inherently insane but we attribute cruel motives to others when others attack us. Nagamootoo has a convenient soul. Does he know this? Yes he does, but he plays the fool and concerns himself with mundane issues that have no relation to the fractured country we live in.
In June of this year, two iconic Guyanese – Dr. David Hinds and Lincoln Lewis – had their Sunday Chronicle columns discontinued. I have written five articles on that imbroglio. I have quoted the anger of both men with Lewis accusing Nagamootoo of being part of the heinous and politically distasteful decision.
From June to this day, Nagamootoo has not responded to any of those five columns. To this day, Nagamootoo in his Sunday Chronicle pieces has not even alluded in the briefest of ways to what happened at the Chronicle.
Now in walks the convenient soul of Moses Nagamootoo. Yesterday, in the newspaper that he has Cabinet jurisdiction over, he expressed disappointment that I did not do my research to show that there have been more sittings of the House under the APNU+AFC administration than in any other comparative period since 1992. I will not dwell on his statistics because statistics only have meaning when they are accompanied by context.
I will advise Nagamootoo that context is everything in life. Without context, we cannot understand human action. I hope Nagamootoo at least had a cursory reading of Sigmund Freud during his political career. I will not detain myself with the contextual argument. He cites 96 sessions so far under APNU+AFC but many of those sessions could be very short interludes and not major confabulations. But let’s return to the convenient soul of the Prime Minister of Guyana.
So he found it convenient to express disappointment in that particular column. But what about my five columns condemning the repugnant mistreatment of David Hinds and Lincoln Lewis by the Chronicle with the direct accusation by Lewis that Nagamootoo was part of the conspiracy? The man avoids comment on the scandal like the plague.
Here is a direct question to Nagamootoo and it is my hope that he would have the testicular courage to at least offer a paragraph of response. What in the history of struggle for a better Guyana makes him more eligible to write a political column in the Sunday Chronicle and not the two icons – Hinds and Lewis? Hinds and Lewis may have a cleaner slate than Nagamootoo. Hinds went to jail for fighting Burnham. Nagamotoo never saw the inside of the Brickdam lockups. Hinds and Lewis were never part of Jagdeo’s racist crusading government; Nagamootoo was.
Here is a second question to Nagamootoo and here is hoping that in next Sunday Chronicle he devotes his column to a response. What part he played, if any, in removing the two men from the Sunday Chronicle since Lewis has accused him of such a part? It is simply sickening how Guyanese rulers could be so barefaced and also silly not to think that people watching at their nonsense.
Does Nagamootoo believe that after publication of this column Guyanese wouldn’t say; “Yea man, Nagamootoo answer Freddie on the Parliament thing but why he ain’t answering the man on what happened at the Chronicle?”
Let me end on a personal note. Khemraj Ramjattan can answer Nagamootoo if Nagamootoo wants to know if it happened. It happened in February, this year in the office of Minister Ramjattan and the words were spoken directly to Ramjattan. I told Ramjattan that I have contributed longer than Nagamootoo to the struggle for a better Guyana and while Nagamootoo now has a tainted record, my contribution to the poor and powerless goes on.

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