I will never forget and forgive Jagdeo and Ramotar

Jan 03, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The election season hits the country once more. The five-year cycle is here. Election time is not a nice feeling for a nation that has had authoritarian rulers.
What triggers angry emotions in people is when autocrats take to the platform and serenade citizens with angelic portraits that when you tear off the layers, you see monsters lurking where they have been cocooned all along. This is the PPP.
I see the photographs of Jagdeo speaking endlessly about the wrongs of the APNU+AFC regime. He is right. His descriptions are there to see. But what about his wrongs that were gargantuan? What about the descriptions of him, 2001- 2015, painted by others that are so factually graphic?
I open the newspapers and I see a weekly letter from Ramotar bemoaning the lack of democracy under the present government. He is right. But there was no democracy under him when he was president.
I read all the time of Bibi Shadick and Robeson Benn lamenting undemocratic decisions by the GECOM Commission. Who or what made Benn and Shadick democrats?
I see letters published in the newspapers by Gail Teixeira referring to violations of citizens’ rights. I am getting on in age but my memory has not deteriorated into fragmentary parts. Ms. Teixiera was no democrat when her party ruled Guyana for 23 years.
The Dem Boys Seh satirical column in this newspaper referred to Ben as “Bruk Up Benn.”
These are memories of autocracy that a nation should lock deep inside the corridors of its mind and never forget and must always conjure up and invoke when the PPP takes to the campaign trail which they will do on Sunday.
What are they going to tell people on Sunday? That under Jagdeo and the man, Jagdeo picked to succeed him, Ramotar their rule was better? I say it was not.
Let me say out loudly – people’s choice as to how they vote should be respected. I will always hold the negative feeling I have about Ronald Waddell when I heard him say on television during the post election violence of 1997 that Indians who voted for the PNC will be protected.
I don’t agree with a vote for certain leaders and I have a right to express that disagreement and I don’t agree that the PPP should be allowed to rule this nation again after 15 years of what I will interpret as a creeping fascistization.
The PPP has been given enormous space to recreate itself because of terrible and horrible mistakes by the APNU+AFC regime. And it has used that space to obfuscate 15 years of violent oligarchy. If the Guyanese people want to forget about the excesses of Jagdeo, Ramotar and company and vote for the PPP, that is their right.
People voted for glaringly terrible leaders in the US, the UK, Brazil, Italy, Poland, Hungary and other places. That was their right but undemocratic leaders can destroy a nation even if they are elected.
I do not feel the PPP should be given the right to administer the affairs of this nation again. Others may think different. But I have memories and memories of violations must not be forgotten.
The PPP never forget that three of its supporters were gunned down in the 1973 elections. They talk about it all the time. The PPP never forget about the killing of Father Darke; they talk about it all the time. They talk about the death of Rodney all the time.
Others should continue to bemoan what the PPP did during those fifteen years. My memory still works. I remember the three treason accused. I remember Courtney Crum Ewing. But let’s move closer to home – me.
I can forgive and forget many violations thrusted upon me as if they were minor ones. You have to expect that. But for those who think we have angels in Freedom House here is the justification for the title of this column.
Twice I was attacked; in one incident I could have lost my life. My UG contract was terminated five months before it expired. The GRA visited me constantly. Mr. Jagdeo sued me for libel, an act, presidents and prime ministers hardly do to newspapers columnists. It is rare in the democratic world.
Remember, the trench cleaning act of Robeson Benn? Juan Edghill asked a judge to commit me to prison for contempt because I commented on his tenure as the head of the Ethnic Relations Commission. Then there was the victimization of my wife at GOINVEST.
They posted up a picture of two women making love and named my daughter as one. I end this column with one word I think best describe such rulers – evil.

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I will never forget and forgive Jagdeo and Ramotar

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