Latest update April 18th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 07, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I went to get my shoes and my wife’s repaired at Bourda Market last Monday morning (the holiday) because we planned to wear them the next day. At the rate the Chinese manufacturers are going, their goods are going to be boycotted in this country. My wife ordered her pair of shoes through the Avon cosmetic catalogue.
As they say in common parlance, “you run from the jumbie and reach up with the coffin.” We thought that though the Avon item was made in China, it would be of a better quality. At the first wearing, the stitches came loose. I remember looking for a good umbrella and thought that since John Lewis Styles is where all the rich pretenders, the empty-headed nouveau riche, and the dressed-up wannabes go to shop, then an umbrella at that store may be of a better quality.
I paid three thousand dollars for that umbrella and it was as fragile as the ones you buy for five hundred dollars all over the pavements in downtown Georgetown. I collected my shoes which were done right away, went to the greens and fruits section of the market, and on the way home stopped at the supermarket to buy Hershey’s chocolate kisses that my wife requested for her relatives whom she invited for lunch that Monday.
I drove in the yard and as I was about to get out of the car, my phone rang. It was a top Minister of the Government. I am not going to name him (it is a him not a her – in July 2013, I had a telephone conversation with a her – Satyra Gyaal. She denied that the attacks on my life were conspiracies of her government and party).
If my editor-in-chief and the publisher request the name, obviously in the media business, you have to reveal the identity to them. Incidentally, during the Watergate scandal, the publisher of the Washington Post, Katharine Graham, said she never asked for the identity of ‘Deep Throat’. But the editor, Ben Bradley, did request Deep Throat’s name from Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.
It turned out to be an interesting conversation. After wishing me a happy New Year, we talked. I did tell him that he can be assured that my phone has no facilities for taping. In Georgetown lingo, the kind of cell phone I have is jokingly referred to as a “mango-pelter.” But I like it, because it serves my purpose of making calls, receiving calls and telling me the time.
Those are the only functions that interest me in the use of a cell phone.
I will print two of the points I raised with him. I told him in no uncertain terms, I regard the PPP as a worse, much worse regime than the Burnham government. The Rodney death and other nasty acts damaged the credibility of the Burnham government, but when juxtaposed with the Jagdeo cabal (and perhaps Ramotar’s interval of three years) the PPP regime is far more sickening.
The other point was a mystery I needed him to explain. I made it pellucid that the PPP’s image and credibility could have been far better if it had adopted a commonsensical approach to bad individual behaviour in government. I asked him why this is such a mystery. He had no answer.
This aspect of our conversation took up the rest of the time and I offered him several examples where the PPP is simply beyond belief. I mentioned the total lack of disciplinary measures against PPP big wigs and Ministers who do really awful things. I told him I can’t imagine why an Attorney-General was not reprimanded for telling the nation that as a Minister he likes to do illegal things.
He was laughing his head off at that example, because he knew it was weird and bizarre. I really belaboured that point to him, because this entire country cannot understand why the leadership of the Government of Guyana and the PPP would practice such a policy. All over the world, Ministers get a good dressing down for unbecoming behaviour.
I don’t know why he called. I don’t know if he taped our conversation. I hope he did so, and he could take it back and play it to his colleagues. The question of elections did not come up, but I am saying it here in my column – my take is that the PPP will lose the plurality it got at the 2011 elections. It will be hurt by corruption scandals, but equally it will be devastated by the horrible conduct of its princes and princesses. Can’t wait to see Charles Ramson and Kwame McCoy on the campaign trail.
JAGDEO ADDING MORE DANGER TO GUYANA AND THE REGION
Apr 18, 2024
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