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Machiavelli meets Khemraj Ramjattan today at Vryheid’s Lust
I take the street I live on – Railway Embankment – to get to town. The Railway Embankment leads into Railway Street where the AFC’s head office is. So I pass the AFC’s headquarters daily. Last Saturday, on my way to walk my dog in the National Park, while passing the AFC building, I saw Khemraj Ramjattan standing on the parapet chatting with AFC’s General Secretary, Marlon Williams.
Freddie Kissoon
I pulled up, put my dog to the window, and laughingly showed her Khemraj with the words; “Look the next Prime Minister of Guyana.” Khemraj came up to the car, but unlike most humans who have done so with my dog in my lap, he didn’t talk to the dog or play with her. People always touch her or speak to her when they are at the car window. Maybe Khemraj is not an animal lover. I need to remind him of that powerful, philosophical statement; “The soul is never complete unless one loves an animal.”
I told him about information I have as to what will happen at the AFC’s congress today (changed at the last minute from the Convention Centre to St. Paul’s Retreat at Vryheid’s Lust). There is a motion nominating Khemraj to be the prime ministerial candidate in the election coalition with APNU. If the motion is voted on and a majority approves him, then if in the renewed Cummingsburg Accord, the PNC accepts the PM slot will go to the AFC, then, a victory will see Khemraj as the PM.
But I told Khemraj what I know. And what I know was given to me by solid sources through my contacts. There will be a formidable attempt to prevent the motion from being put to the floor. So I placed a bet with Khemraj. If I am wrong today, then he tells me what I can do. If I win the bet, he buys a car for me. I told him, I saw one for 2.9 million dollars at the car store next to the Rubis gas station at Liliendaal.
His smiles were larger than the venue where war will break out today. His yells were so loud, they scared my dog. He shouted out; “nah, I’m not betting” to which I replied, “Come on, bet if you think I don’t know what I am talking about.” Then I looked straight into his face with rising decibels and said, “I really don’t care if you or Nagamootoo win or lose, both of you have destroyed my country.” He reacted; “What have I done, what have I done.” I was too angry with a tinge of contempt to reply to that pathetic nonsense that came out of his mouth.
I wanted to get personal, but the little sanity left in me prevailed and I drove away. I wanted to remind him that he led the picket at UG when my contract was terminated. The Ombudsman ruled the termination was not legally done, yet when Ramjattan became a Vice President, he or no one else asked me if I wanted to return to UG, and no one has sought compensation for me. This was the same Ramjattan that was perambulating the corridors of parliament shouting out support for the Hamilton Green Pension Bill, which made Mr. Green’s prime ministerial pension retroactive to the time he was PM.
Thursday night, I was walking my dog on the sprawling concrete lawns of the MovieTowne complex when I got a call from Abel Seetaram, AFC councillor for Region 5. He yelled into his phone, “Freddie, yuh see de video Imran post up attacking Khemraj?” Using pellucid language, I told Abel I don’t give an F about the battle between Moses Nagamootoo and Khemraj Ramjattan; they are both useless.
I know there is going to be a formidable attempt to derail the motion today. Khemraj is up against a very competent strategist – Raphael Trotman. He is one of the most brilliant strategists politics has produced in Guyana. Trotman is the man planning the Nagamootoo campaign.
Nagamootoo is an old fox gaining oceanic experience in Machiavellian cunning from his forty years in the PPP where each congress was manipulated since Jagan moved against Balram Singh Rai in favour of Brindley Benn at the 1962 congress (see, Baytoram Ramharack’s, “Against the Grain: The Politics of Balram Singh Rai”).
Machiavelli will cast a long, huge shadow over the AFC delegates at today’s fateful confabulation. But despite the guns that Ramjattan and Nagamootoo will be firing at each other, the war will be in vain. Two reasons explain. The PNC isn’t going with a PM candidate from the AFC and the AFC is already dead meat.
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