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Politicians whose records must be questioned

Apr 29, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

We have a very small population that is one of the youngest (maybe the youngest) in the world. It is unfortunate that our young people are not questioning politicians who want to administer the affairs of their country and who are in their seventies and have been around for ages.
Here is some interesting information. In the AFC there is a raging battle between Ramjattan and Nagamootoo for the nomination of the prime ministerial slot in the upcoming AFC congress in June. Nagamootoo is in his seventies and has been around since the 1970s.
President Granger is in his seventies and told an overseas PNC group that he has been active with the PNC the past 50 years. Henry Jeffrey and Ralph Ramkarran have co-founded a party to contest the next election. Both men are in their seventies and have been in politics since the seventies.
Ramon Gaskin has formed a political party. He has been in politics since the sixties and is nearing 80 years of age.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to be the head of government at age 75. It is nonsensical for anyone to say age should be a disqualifier in running for office. My favourite candidate in the upcoming presidential election in the US is a man in his late seventies – Bernie Sanders. So age is not of importance to me but past performance is. Your record is.
In a previous column, I asked the question why Guyanese would want to vote for politicians like Gaskin, Ramkarran and Jeffrey. My question was unrelated to age but to their history. Jeffrey took umbrage at that and wrote that I was motivated by personal thinking. I was driven to make that observation because of the past record of Jeffrey.
In all, not most, but all countries, a man who has been a minister for 17 years in which he did not make himself a transformer or radical thinker will be subject to academic scrutiny from the society when he decides to form a party and contest national election.
I do not intend to let Nagamootoo, Gaskin, Jeffrey and others escape the attention of my pen because that is my work. No amount of personal attacks on my character will deter me. I think I can safely slip into a little piece of acceptable chauvinism and say all Guyanese know I am not bothered by ridicule. It galvanizes me to keep working.
Henry Jeffrey served for 17 years as a Cabinet minister holding portfolios for which there hardly has been transformation in those sectors – education, health, trade etc. In one of those areas, Jeffrey’s jurisdiction directly impacted my work. He was minister of education while I was a lecturer at UG.
I will not allow Jeffrey to form a political party, contest national elections and not do what is expected of me by Guyanese in and out of Guyana – to analyze a leader whose party wants to run my country.
Guyanese would know that Jeffrey writes a weekly column in the Stabroek News in which there are voluminous and vociferous condemnations of the PPP when it was in government. Jeffrey’s anti-PPP canvas includes race discrimination and hogging of political power.
An analyst is bound to ask and must ask – so what was Jeffrey doing for 17 years in this evil configuration of power.
We don’t have the answer to that because Jeffrey never took a maverick stance or enunciated a dissenting voice in those 17 years. But here is the thing. Jeffrey never left the government of President Jagdeo on account of the perversities that had characterized the use of power.
After being removed from the Ministry of International Trade, he was assigned as Ambassador to Suriname and from what was published then, certain request for additional resources was turned down and Jeffrey parted company with the Jagdeo administration.
Jeffrey has done many columns and we are still to see any critical analysis from him about the role he played in stemming the tide of perverted use of power and race-based discrimination while having a 17 year career as a Cabinet minister.
I have lived in Guyana in those 17 years of Jeffrey’s tenure doing what I currently do – comment on things in Guyana and I cannot recall just one occasion in which Jeffrey publicly proclaimed a policy difference with his government or even an innocuous dissent.
Jeffrey never came across as a thinker or transformer in his 17-year career as a Cabinet minister. Now in 2019, he forms a political party, tells Guyanese he wants to hold the balance of power in parliament. His past record must be commented on. I will do just that.

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