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THE FREDDIE KISSOON COLUMN – I have a video
Jul 02, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
One thread of President Bharrat Jagdeo’s style of politics that I continue to lament is his weak PR responses.
It is not confined to Mr. Jagdeo but the entire PPP leadership. You want to believe that most PPP leaders are just naturally untalented people because after sixteen years in government, you are yet to see a brilliant masterpiece that would floor the opposition and PPP critics.
Take the Oliver Sam embarrassment. When I read that piece of political putridity, I felt for my country.
If I was migrating then I would just have shrugged my shoulder and wished my fellow citizens that I would be leaving behind good luck with the incompetent government that rules them.
But I am staying here and my life and all our lives are affected by the systematic failure of the Guyana Government to effectively and successfully administer the business of this nation.
The Oliver Sam inanity is as bad as it gets. This top PPP leader used to write letters under the fictional name of Oliver Sam.
Oliver Sam’s correspondence in the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News consisted of details of the inner workings of the PPP, the PCD and the Government of Guyana. So readers knew that it was a long-standing general in Freedom House that was doing the analysis using a false name.
When the Stabroek News requested an address and telephone number, Uncle Sam provided the information. But it was false.
Thus Uncle Sam was exposed. The PPP general then did a stupid thing. Knowing that he was caught, the best retreat was to shut up. The PPP lieutenant went on the attack, asserting most vehemently that there is a real citizen of Guyana by the name of Oliver Sam.
Extensive search of the national register of voters, the registry of births and deaths and the telephone directory failed to produce Oliver Sam. A school boy would not have been that foolish to insist that a non-existent person can be produced in real life.
What is the point? How can a high-level policymaker for a country be so incompetent? It leaves you to wonder about the consequences of such ineptitude for the future of this country.
Another example is then Home Affairs Minister, Ronald Gajraj. Why would a Minister in the year 2004, after thousands of real life stories and movies about recorded telephone calls bringing down powerful people, make frequent contacts with a dubious character of the night on his cell phone?
It was damning evidence that he was acting outside of the jurisdiction of the law. The rest is now history.
We have been hearing all kinds of denials about Roger Khan. What happens if the evidence is produced that contradicts such denials.
Is it the wise course to take to claim that the government had no extra-judicial contacts with Khan? President Jagdeo was not on good grounds when he told reporters that the US Government had to give permission to export the laptop because buying such sensitive equipment always requires US Government permission.
This was an irrelevancy that the media should not have allowed. The question was not US permission for the export of the laptop but who requested the item in the first place. The US cannot give a license if someone didn’t ask to make a purchase. It is quite logical to assume that the US Government would not issue a permit to a private citizen but state agencies of foreign countries.
We come now to the video taken from surveillance of alleged criminals in Buxton. President Jagdeo has put two conditions on the release of the video.
To make it public would reveal which houses the shots were taken from and that could endanger the civilian helpers (he used the word “informers”). Secondly, the video will be made available after all the accused in the frames are caught. Does this make sense? It does and it does not.
If you have been secretly filming suspects then if they see the shots they can tell from which angle they were taken and that could allow them to guess from which building the camera was installed.
But one can accuse the government of propaganda since we will never see the frames if all the accused are not arrested. Well then one can say that there is no such film and the government invented it just to cast aspersions on the opposition, PNC.
President Jagdeo did say most unambiguously that the video would show that politicians were involved. How are we to believe that and why must we believe it in a country where both the government and the PPP play zero sum politics.
To make the video story credible, the government must show it to certain stakeholders – Kaieteur News, Stabroek News, the AFC and CARICOM officials.
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