Harmon and Ramjattan: Yesterday’s evaporated raindrops

Jul 06, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – Last week, two statements – one from Joseph Harmon and the other from Khemraj Ramjattan – were large indications of how shambolic the opposition has become. Let’s look at Ramjattan’s comedy first.
The pattern in this country is that Ramjattan speaks comical things while Harmon utters dangerous things. But the similarity is that both are exhibiting precarious political lives.
In relation to Ramjattan, he is a sad relic of the past. There is no physiology in the AFC. Under the AFC’s constitution, his leadership term ended in June last month. The statutory congress was not held. When it is, it is doubtful there will be a quorum or if there will be contestants to fill leadership positions. The silent consensus in the AFC is that its time has passed.
What Ramjattan is doing is relying on the PNC to survive politically. What is going to happen then is that the PNC is going to prop up the AFC so that Ramjattan can remain relevant. But in doing so, Ramjattan becomes the Indian face of the PNC displacing the Indian persons that the other leaders of the PNC want – the Georgetown Mayor, Ubraj Singh, and the Region Four Chairman, Daniel Seeram.
In fact, apart from Granger and Harmon, the rest of the PNC’s pyramid cannot stand Ramjattan. If APNU+AFC had won, Ramjattan would not have been made the prime minister.
In relation to Harmon, he will never win an internal PNC election for either leader or chairman. Mr. Harmon will be decimated by his rivals – Volda Lawrence, Carl Greenidge, Aubrey Norton and Van West Charles. So what we have in Guyana are two opposition leaders that are virtually on life-support. This may explain why they live in the past.
The statement from Ramjattan came at a press conference he held last week in which he said the opposition would not recognise the PPP government as legitimate. He spoke about dead people voting so the PPP is not legally elected. Now why is the PPP not the legal government?
Because Ramjattan says so. The very outfit that Ramjattan is part of filed two election petitions in the courts and lost both. So a convicted murderer is not a criminal because Ramjattan says so. Whatever Ramjattan feels becomes reality. So the government is not a valid one, not because the courts said so, not because the international community said so but because Ramjattan said so.
This is the same Ramjattan who has to face permanent humiliation for the rest of his life because there is a tape available to the world in which Ramjattan as a minister of government met his staff and conceded that his outfit – APNU+AFC – lost the 2020 election.
You listen to the tape and you have to feel that this man cannot lead a school of guinea pigs, much less a political party. The words were pellucid, unambiguous and verifiable. He conceded defeat. Then by some weird, contorted logic of hilarity, the next day he announced that he didn’t say that. And the tape is there for the world to listen to. Surely, opposition supporters cannot be so hopeless to accept such a man as one of their leaders.
Harmon’s statement is a repetition of the incitement he conducted in Region Five last September after the two Henry cousins were found dead in Cotton Tree village. Violent attacks on Indians followed and it was Volda Lawrence who went to Cotton Tree and urged PNC supporters not to be influenced by the dangerous exhortations of Granger and Harmon because the violent way is not the world that African Guyanese belong to.
Harmon is threatening unrest over the arrest of Annette Ferguson whom the police have compiled a file on for the DPP to peruse. The issue is an alleged accusation against a high-ranking security official from the army.
Who are these people that will create confusion and mayhem? Harmon and his acolytes in the PNC, WPA and AFC have been living in the past. Guyana is not the Guyana of 1992, 1997 and 2002 when the PNC perpetuated election driven violence and Buxton based terror to destabilise Guyana. African Guyanese are not going to sacrifice their livelihood and lives for Harmon and David Granger.
Since the election fiasco, African Guyanese have got on with their lives. Then came a pandemic, then came the second worst flood in our history. Guyanese are coping with troubled times that are devastating the world economy, and to add to that, we here in Guyana suffered a double whammy – pandemic and floods. Which section of the population is going to create unrest in their country? Harmon and Granger will be a two-man army with the Guyanese 007 closely behind. You only live once.
(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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