Latest update April 20th, 2024 12:59 AM
Aug 31, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I don’t know the names of the journalists that covered Mr. Jagdeo’s presentation at the dinner hosted by the Private Sector Commission last Friday evening but if the “older heads” were there like Enrico Woolford, Bert Wilkinson and others who worked in the eighties, then the mental stress they endured is something we would not want to imagine. These are media workers who have seen the descent into authoritarianism under both Burnham and Hoyte and how the media became devoured by the pangs of dictatorship.
On a hot summer night, at the Pegasus Hotel, the Private Sector and the media saw the pangs of dictatorship attempting once more to decapitate democracy in this tragic land in the form of an autocratic, pompous, arrogant, misleading, venom-filled speech by President Jagdeo. In the eighties, it was dictatorship.
Today, in 2009, we put an adjective in front and refer to the Guyana Government as an elected dictatorship. No one should be surprised at the emanations of Mr. Jagdeo on that hot, Friday August night by the Kingston seawall. What we hope in this country is that voters took note of Mr. Jagdeo’s state of mind and that all opposition parties start preparing for the battle of 2011.
This writer is not convinced that Mr. Jagdeo is not interested in a third term. Mr. Jagdeo did not commit himself to saying, “I will not run in 2011 no matter if the Constitution is changed to allow me to and people beg me to.” Let Mr. Jagdeo use those words.
To date he has not. This writer says unapologetically, that Mr. Vishnu Bisram’s invented poll two weeks ago is the first testing of the water. Let the people of Guyana who would have read this column remember this essay as 2011 approaches. The emotions of certain persons in the Executive Committee and the Central Committee of the PPP will run amok and demand that Mr. Jagdeo be given a third term.
The cry will reverberate all over Freedom House that only Mr. Jagdeo can beat the other contestants. Skullduggery will be done in Parliament, Mr. Jagdeo will walk into Freedom House like the Prodigal Son who has returned and will accept Freedom House’s crown. The country will reject it.
The opposition will become a runaway train and it will be the last nail in the coffin for one of the world’s most tragic troubled spots. I wrote about this before.
Is there anyone out there so stupid to think Mr. Bisram did a poll and it found that Leslie Ramsammy is the most popular Cabinet Minister and Guyanese want Mr. Jagdeo to run for a third time. Mr. Vishnu Bisram is still laughing. Don’t let him laugh at you. Let us return to elected dictatorship on a hot August night at the Kingston seawall, a place I know like the back of my hand.
Mr. Jagdeo was on his own turf. If there is anything Mr. Jagdeo knows, it is how to manoeuvre on his own turf. In Guyana, we call it “Monkey know which limb to jump on.”
Mr. Jagdeo was at my work place to propagandise on his elusive low carbon thing. He addressed the UG community yet most surprisingly, even at question time, he didn’t move the format away from low carbon and stray into other fields.
Not a word was said about Freddie Kissoon. Not even a whisper about my ocean of faults. Mr. Jagdeo was on my turf and he rode on it carefully. In that audience were persons who would have confronted Mr. Jagdeo on his sarcastic remarks on Freddie Kissoon. But while on my turf, Mr. Jagdeo forgot to confront me.
On Friday night, Mr. Jagdeo reminded his helpless listeners – the reticent, fearful business community – that he was walking around in Jamaica with its PM, Bruce Golding and what he saw there was a low key approach to crime on the front pages of the Jamaican newspapers.
That is not an accurate description on how the Jamaican media report crime but we will deal with that in another column. Mr. Jagdeo stopped. He didn’t go on to say what ought to be said, what he should have put into his speech about the Jamaican newspapers.
The sheep in the audience remained sheepish. No one, like the boy who didn’t know about the King’s New Clothes, asked Mr. Jagdeo if the Jamaican newspapers would have tolerated one radio station only, a refusal of the Government to have a Freedom of Information Act, secrecy about a hotel construction and alleged wife abuse by the Prime Minister.
Where is the BETTER MANAGEMENT/RENEGOTIATION OF THE OIL CONTRACTS you promised Jagdeo?
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