The PPP cannot acknowledge even one mistake

Aug 15, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Dr. Cheddi Jagan and his wife Janet were presidents for a combined six years. That is a short period and they are not alive, so we will never know what mistakes they made. But they carried out selfish policies that people never expected of them during the long years of the struggle against Burnham’s dictatorship.
I have personal knowledge of an egregious attitude of President Cheddi Jagan. I spoke to him personally and suggested that Dr. Clive Thomas be made the Vice Chancellor of UG. This was after the 1992 victory of the PPP. Because of the superhuman efforts the WPA played in the struggle for free and fair elections, I thought it would have been a done deal.
President Jagan told me that Thomas must apply for the position. He went on to state that he could not invite Thomas to fill the vacancy. President Jagan lied to me and in a barefaced way. As he settled down in power, he and his party were inviting favoured people to take up very important placements in the state sector.
Jagan simply was not interested in having any WPA leader in any serious position of authority. As someone who participated the long years in the fight against the oligarchic regime of Burnham and had direct knowledge of the WPA’s crucial roles, it was a nasty unforgivable act by Cheddi Jagan. Whatever heroic status Jagan is given in Guyana, there were very selfish and destructive dimensions to his praxis. His hogging of power after 1992 was unforgivable. The PPP was not the effective organization against Burnham as aging PPP supporters think.
From 1999 to 2015, Jagdeo and Ramotar shared fifteen years of domination of Guyana. Tomorrow, there will be yet another letter by Ramotar in the press. Tomorrow, there will be yet another press conference by Jagdeo. Tomorrow and the days and weeks after, the four daily newspapers will publish a plethora by PPP leaders on the condemnations of the use of power in today’s Guyana. However, those in the PPP who ran Guyana from 1999 to 2015 will not have the moral decency to just pen one line, not one paragraph, but just one line, acknowledging at least one mistake about governance from 1999 to 2015.
We begin an enumeration of this morbid state of mind with the Judicial Review Act. The PPP wants the Act to be implemented so the public can have access to its positive provisions. The PPP asked the court to rule that the Act must come into functional existence immediately. The court decided in the PPP’s favour. The Attorney General asked for a stay in the decision, the court refused.
What has not come out in public is that in 2010 that Act was passed. The PPP had five more years of power after that, but never made the Act a reality. The simple, decent thing to do is to apologize to the nation for its action. But in its court battle to have the Act functional, the PPP leaders ignore their own misconduct.
Donald Ramotar has a new habit of writing frequent letters to the four dailies. There are mountainous allegations of corruption and wrongdoing against the three-year-old APNU+AFC regime. In his ramblings, he denies there was sole-sourcing of drugs when he and Jagdeo were presidents. He rejects the existence of corruption in the fifteen years he and Jagdeo dominated Guyana.
It would at least help his credibility if in his critiques of the new administration that he would at least acknowledge that venal things happened under his watch and during Jagdeo’s presidency. Don’t expect this from Ramotar. But so obsessed with his own moral delusions, Ramotar cannot see that he cuts a figure of derision when he writes his denials.
Jagdeo as president left a Cabinet session when a concession for Bobby Ramroop was being debated. Jagdeo said Ramroop was his friend, so he chose not to be part of the Cabinet’s decision. Ramotar would have us believe that the friends of the APNU+AFC regime are getting concessions but when he was President, friends of the PPP never received such generosities. How can a former president write such appalling things without being laughed at?
Is Ramotar aware that President Jagdeo referred to Guyanese icon, Yesu Persaud as ignorant, when Persaud at the launching of Guyana Times said that Ramroop was getting concessions not backed by proper regulations? Then when Persaud was proven right, the ruling PPP went to Parliament and corrected the concessions retroactively. Can’t Ramotar have a little moral obligation to explain incidents like that one as he continues his frenetic habit of letter-writing?

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