Orpheus descending: Gail Teixeira, part 2

Aug 27, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I don’t think any critic would rate Tennessee Williams’ “Orpheus Descending” among his best plays. I am not a literary reviewer but I beg to disagree. It remains my favourite Williams work.
I guess each of us sees something in a song, a novel, or a movie that makes us choose it above the more popular ones.
When in 2011, Teixeira announced her candidacy for the PPP presidential slot, I did a piece captioned, “Orpheus Descending: The story of Gail Teixeira,” KN, Saturday, February 12, 2011. Seven years after, she declared her desire to be the president, Teixeira is at it again. She says she is considering contesting the position for 2020.
Then Teixeira got bold after Volda Lawrence won the chairperson position of the PNC. She said in a general election, she would beat Lawrence badly. Please note, the analogy of the first article in 2011 and this one is to the theme of Williams’ play and not the figure in Ancient Greek mythology, Orpheus.
The person to decide Teixeira’s fate is her boss, Bharrat Jagdeo. And it looks like Teixeira’s fate has already been decided. Jagdeo in analyzing the PNC’s congressional election results observed that the PNC chose older folks over youth. He said the picture is vastly dissimilar to the last PPP congress where a majority of the winners to top positions were young people. Jagdeo accused the PNC during the congressional campaign of fooling the young PNC delegates.
From his criticism of the average age of the PNC’s executives, it is obvious that Mr Jagdeo wants to emphasize youth in the PPP’s kingdom of leaders. How then is Teixeira going to clinch the PPP’s presidential slot? Teixeira is 67 years of age.
If Jagdeo is rooting for younger candidates and Jagdeo’s preference is decisive then why would Jagdeo choose a 67-year-old woman to be the PPP presidential candidate in 2020, a date when Teixeira would have entered the steps of the door to being 70 years?
What possible reason could Jagdeo have for selecting Teixeira? But for the sake of argument, let us say Jagdeo will not interfere, then, Teixeira will have to square off against three younger contestants – Irfaan Ali, Frank Anthony and Anil Nandlall. And what will happen to Teixeira if a vibrant young woman throws her hat in the ring.
People are talking about Dr. Vindya Persaud.
What arguments could Teixeira assemble to convince the 35 members of the PPP central committee that she is a better candidate than the four names listed above?
Anthony of the four is more a laid back person who doesn’t ooze any charisma at all. Ali is far more a vote getter than Teixeira. Comparing Nandlall and Teixeira would be a mockery. If all PPP members have to vote for the presidential slot and the two contestants are Nandlall and Teixeira, I think Teixeira would get only one vote – her own.
If Vindya Persaud joins the race, which Hindu will vote for Teixeira over the doctor?
After Lawrence’s victory, Teixeira began to boast that she would slaughter Lawrence in the 2020 elections. She withdrew the world “slaughter” and substituted the verb, “beat.” Obvious it was a Freudian slip. “Slaughter” was the intended word because the PPP has lived with the comical yet dangerous illusion that it could outdo any political party that competes with it in national elections.
If Teixeira is selected for 2020, what could Teixeira tell the very young electorate of Guyana? I would like to think Guyana has one of the youngest voting populations in the entire world. Teixeira has been around the PPP leadership for more than forty-five years and has been in the Cabinet since her party won the election n in 1992 and lost in 2015.
She is the consummate Stalinist. Jagdeo is an existential tyrant. Teixeira is an ideological tyrant. That makes her far more authoritarian in mind and soul than Jagdeo. It is no accident that the two most autocratic personalities in the PPP leaders were special protégés of Janet Jagan – Clement Rohee and Gail Teixeira.
Mrs. Jagan remains the most hard-lined, inflexible, undemocratic personality politics in British Guiana and Guyana have thrown up.
Only a fool would think that Forbes Burnham was a more intolerant person than Mrs. Jagan. For all the bad things he did in his long years of domination, Mr. Burnham had a far more accommodating attitude to people in general than Mrs. Jagan. Burnham had a likeable side. Once you get to know him, you like him. Mrs. Jagan had an intimidating personality and saw life in black and white.
Gail Teixeira is the junior Mrs. Jagan. Guyanese will never make her president.

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