Nagamootoo and Ramotar: Lie, yuh hear lie?

Aug 10, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I was coming out of Giftland Mall and this gentleman came up to meet me. He was with his family and said he was from Whim, and will be going back there the next day.
He wanted to talk about Nagamootoo. The conversation got going and it turned uneasy for me, because his wife and two little girls were kept waiting. I wasn’t interested in talking about Nagamootoo, but then he told me something interesting.
He said that during the 2015 election campaign, there was an APNU+AFC rally at Whim, and people were taken there from other locations in several trucks, wearing APNU colours and waving palm trees. He said it was a disaster for Nagamootoo, because the people of Whim didn’t like how the APNU supporters were behaving. And that played a large part in the loss of Whim to the PPP. He said that during the rally, he spoke with Nagamootoo.
What Nagamootoo said caused him to change his mind, and the days after he told several persons in the village, including two relatives of Nagamootoo, who were shocked at the revelation. Nagamootoo told him that he had no part in the planning of the rally. He looked at me with vexed eyes and intoned; “Freddie, that is your home town, you have a rally there and you didn’t plan it?”
Before we parted, I enquired about the election campaign coming up. He said that one of Nagamootoo’s close relatives told him that in 2015 she voted for him, but not this time. I laughingly said that Nagamootoo is always writing these words, “they look set to pick Naga’s bones in Whim.” This is how he reacted; “We gon pick more than he bones this time.”
Moses Nagamootoo has had a weekly column for years now in the Chronicle. He tackles all of kinds of issues, and some he avoids like the plague. He has refused to pen even one sentence of response to David Hinds and Lincoln Lewis. Both men contend that he was a willing participant in the decision to stop their Chronicle columns.
It is unacceptable that no journalist has ever asked him to answer these men. Nagamootoo is like Granger; after four years of power, Granger held only three press conferences; Nagamootoo not one. So as we come up to a general elections, journalists have to do their research. They have to pursue questions that must be pursued. Nagamootoo has the moral obligation to voters to explain his role, if any, in the Chronicle imbroglio.
If he ever holds a town hall meeting during the upcoming campaign where questions are allowed, even if it is Port Mourant or Lethem, I will travel there, and as a voter, demand that he explain why these two men were removed. The issue reverberated all over Guyana, yet Nagamootoo has avoided the story like the Ebola virus.
Of course, he may not hold a town hall meeting at all, because he may not be on the campaign trail. I am convinced that he will not get the PM slot. I was speaking with one of the AFC’s decision-makers last Monday and this vexation came up. He said the AFC recommended Ramjattan for the PM slot. APNU cannot hope to keep the election coalition intact if they choose Nagamootoo over Ramjattan. These were his words – “then the coalition will break up.”
As we countdown to the election date, questions from the voters and the media must cascade like a fountain. Donald Ramotar and Nagamootoo have the same corrugated, twisted, political culture that they inherited from the PPP since they were in short pants. Both men are barefaced, in that they write and speak often, but evade the truth.
Ramotar, in reply to Eusi Kwayana, uttered one of the sickest asininities that can ever come out of the mouth of a politician. He prorogued the House in December 2010 knowing full well that his minority government would have fallen with the no-confidence motion that was on the Order Paper. He wrote recently that the prorogation was done so as to facilitate dialogue between the ruling party and opposition.
What idiocy! How can any former president write such nonsense? How can you stop parliament from functioning and expect the opposition, which has a majority in the very parliament, to open talks with you?
Nagamootoo told me in 2014 at the Christmas lime on the premises of David Patterson’s company in D’Urban Backlands that he was writing his memoir. He said it would be out shortly. I was told Ramotar is writing his own. There is a famous calypso with the line; “lie, yuh hear lie?”

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)

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