The part about Charran that Ramjattan left out

Nov 29, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I don’t want a smart phone. Someone wanted me to listen to Khemraj Ramjattan’s eulogy on the death anniversary of Sheila Holder, so he sent it to the smart phone of a friend, who played it for me. The event was held outside the head office of the AFC on Railway Road, which is the continuation of the Railway Embankment.
There is a part of that delivery that young people need to listen to. There are several new political parties born recently, and young activists predominate in them. Young Guyanese have to overthrow the medieval political culture, ancient oligarchy, outdated minds, and the anachronistic rule of the only two parties that have wielded power since 1957 – PPP and PNC.
My advice to all the younger folks in those newly emergent parties is to listen to a section of Ramjattan’s speech, because it is important to internalize what he said, reject his double standards, and shape a new political culture, where the authority of party leadership can be questioned by its members.
I share (present tense) a close friendship with Charrandass Persaud. For years, since 2015 when the AFC became depraved and power-intoxicated, I would urge Charran to confront and expose the monstrous, obnoxious nature of some in the AFC. Only one independent mind earlier in the tenure of the APNU+AFC coalition had the temerity to tell the AFC that it was a power drunk party – Dr. David Hinds.
Charran was one of the most sought after lawyers in Berbice. His practice was doing well and he could have lived a comfortable life in Guyana, with status and recognition, without being a sycophant of anyone in the AFC, many of whom were political novices and hadn’t the moral value in them that Charran had.
Month after month, year after year, I would discuss with Charran the need to expose them. One issue after another came up, and I would press Charran to publicly confront these monsters. Each time he came to Georgetown from Berbice for parliamentary sittings, he stayed a five-minute drive from where I live, and we would talk. Charran would tell me about things being done in his party that I was deeply disgusted with, because the extreme decadence exceeded the venalities of the PPP.
I couldn’t get Charran to do it. Then he made up his mind and he did. I knew it was coming, and I encouraged him. Yes, I encouraged Charran to contemplate voting for a no-confidence motion (NCM).
There are those who are accusing Charran of taking money to vote for the NCM.
Poor Charran! He has not written a line on any of the sickeningly corrupt acts (and there are shocking ones) carried out by many of his accusers.
What has all of this got to do with what Ramjattan said at Holder’s death anniversary event? Ramjattan explained that though proportional representation was the preferred electoral system, he and Holder saw the need to have a constituency system too, where party leaders would visit their constituencies and gel with the people there. So, he said, the AFC allocated a constituency to each leader.
Then Ramjattan went on to other topics. What did he leave out?
In 2015, Charran became the elected representative from the AFC for Berbice. But the AFC’s kings and queens never informed the Berbice parliamentary representative what decisions the APNU+AFC regime had taken for Berbice.
Charran told this columnist he did not know about the closure of the Berbice sugar estates until he read it in the media. Ryan Crawford, Charran’s fellow Berbice attorney, told the media that he would play dominoes on Charran’s bridge with Charran and other friends when sugar workers would ride past them on their bicycles and heap very nasty abuse on Charran for not informing them of the impending action.
Juxtapose what Crawford said with what Ramjattan uttered last month in Berbice. He told an audience that it was an AFC decision to close the estates. If you believe Crawford and Charran, then the AFC did not inform its Berbice parliamentary representative that it was closing the estates.
None of the sycophants, Pavlovian creatures, nonentities and nincompoops in the AFC who sat in the audience on Wednesday evening had the moral decency to go up to Ramjattan while the food was being shared and say’ “But Khemraj, that was an unforgivable thing to do – close the estates without informing the Berbice rep.” Choose carefully how you vote.

(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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The part about Charran that Ramjattan left out

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