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Dec 18, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I was in the picket line on Tuesday outside the office of the Attorney-General demanding his removal. Demonstrators were yelling all types of funny chants but one was so good that I stuck with that for the duration of the exercise. Demonstrators shouted out that President Ramotar’s real name is REMOTE-TAR, meaning that someone other than the President himself is pressing the buttons of decision-making.
Things got funny when demonstrators, including this columnist, shouted out that it was Bharrat Jagdeo who has the remote control in his hands. It was agreed by all in the picket line that we should give Mr. Ramotar a Christmas gift of a remote control bought from one of the stores owned by Mr. Jagdeo.
It was a hilarious way of saying that Mr. Ramotar was never and is not in control of the presidency. If you take away all the ceremonial, inconsequential visits that Mr. Ramotar makes inside and outside Guyana, then Mr. Ramotar will not be in the news at all. On the contrary, many Ministers are constantly being quoted in the media for saying and doing things that have impacted on policy-making.
Mr. Ramotar is quickly becoming the silent President. When asked by a reporter for his take on the report into corruption at NCN, Mr. Ramotar said that he didn’t anticipate the question. To date, he keeps avoiding an answer on when he will act on the report. But it was the Nandlall tape controversy that revealed the bankruptcy of Mr. Ramotar’s politics.
To date, Mr. Ramotar refuses to offer even a one-word reaction to the content of the tape. Two young leaders in his party have shown far more capacity to think and act than Mr. Ramotar himself. I will have more to say on the strong possibility of a PPP defeat at the polls in 2015 should Mr. Ramotar clinch the PPP’s presidential sloth. Surely, the PPP is on a high risk gamble with Mr. Ramotar much to the delight of the opposition parties.
Minister Manickchand has condemned Mr. Nandlall’s condescending views on women in the recording. PPP Parliamentarian, Dr. Vindhya Persaud, has done the same. It means that both women accept that the tape exists and the voice was that of the Attorney-General.
A senior figure with a long history in the PPP, Mrs. Indra Chandarpal, who was a Minister, currently sits in Parliament, occupies a place on the PPP’s central committee and is the current Head of the Commission on Gender Equality, in her capacity as head of that body, has chastised Mr. Nandlall for his offensive remarks about a young female journalist.
The Commission, then, has acknowledged that it was Mr. Nandlall who was on the phone speaking to the journalist.
It means then that three highly placed PPP leaders have agreed with the wider society that Mr. Nandlall made the remarks that are attributed to him in that recording. The man who is the President of the country is still refusing to concede that the country’s administrative head of the legal profession, the Attorney-General made dozens of horrible, dangerous and semi-civilized statements for which he should be dismissed and maybe charged by the police.
So apart from his continued reticence, Mr. Ramotar has sent the tape abroad to ascertain its authenticity. Why then has he refused to castigate Mrs. Chandarpal, Dr. Persaud and Minister Manickchand for rushing to accept a recording that may not be a truthful document? As President and Head of the PPP (despite Mr. Rohee’s position of General-Secretary), Mr. Rohee must know that Chandarpal, Manickchand and Persaud have not accepted their leader’s course of action in having the tape examined to determine its real existence.
Here is a story in the film industry that should make Mr. Ramotar look silly and perhaps idiotic. Two weeks ago the computers of Sony Pictures, a huge corporation in the US, was hacked and the e-mails of one of Hollywood’s top producers, Scott Rudin, and the co-chairman of Sony Pictures, Amy Pascal, were revealed. They had made racist remarks about President Obama.
They have since apologized to Obama and other eminent Americans who were the subject of their condescending comments.
Mr. Rudin and Ms. Pascal did not deny the identity of the e-mail senders. They didn’t say let the e-mails be authenticated first because it may not be they who sent them. They thought it would have been asinine and stupid to deny their authorship. On the other hand, Mr. Ramotar is looking comical by refusing to accept the scientific nature of the recording.
Rudin and Pascal are sensible people. Mr. Ramotar is not such a person.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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