Clint Eastwood is making a fourth version starring Beyonce

Nov 22, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I do try my best to see the television interviews that Yesu Persaud and Christopher Ram do separately every Sunday night. But there is no consistency on my part. Things always get in the way and I would miss several weeks. It is important to listen to these interviewees because many of them are important political actors whose praxis will determine the shape of this nation.
On one occasion, I saw David Granger with Mr. Ram and he said that he was concerned at where the 100,000 absentee voters in the national elections went. I suspect Granger knew that most of them, if they had cast a ballot, would have opted for the opposition. On another occasion I saw Nigel Hughes telling Mr. Persaud that he believes that there should be constitutional reform before another general election. The value of that statement lies in the fact that Mr. Hughes is a huge figure in the AFC.
As a matter of policy my eyes seldom visit NCN and I never watch the PPP stations – channels 65 and 69. Last Sunday evening, I was typing away when my daughter came into the study (you know young people are always roaming the channels) and said to me, “Look what is on channel 11.” I turned on the set and there were four Guyanese political actors that tell the story of a cruel tragedy that has gone on for far too long in Guyana.
The four were Gail Teixeira, Odinga Lumumba, Ravi Dev, and yes, an opposition parliamentarian, Rupert Roopnaraine.
The WPA front man reminds me of that well known statement that journalists in the music industry love to use when they write on a successful artist whose career is over but who refuses to see it – an aging, faded superstar. Actually, there is a very famous story of that tale made three times into a movie, and now Clint Eastwood is planning to make a fourth version starring Beyonce – “A Star is Born.” The best one for me featured Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.
I hope Eastwood brings out his fourth version early so that the WPA front man can see it. It was pathetic to see the WPA front man last Sunday night perform with Gail Teixeira when you think that in the seventies they were both superstars and back then Roopnaraine was by a billion miles, the main attraction.
The story of Teixeira and Roopnarine is the identical theme of “A Star is Born.” Thirty six years later, the WPA front man has paled into mediocrity, intellectual ordinariness and plain stupidity. The WPA front man in 2012 is an aging, faded superstar. Teixeira on the other hand, has remained the subtle, Stalinist talent she always was.
The WPA front man had to contend with Teixeira only. Lumumba was out of his depth and hardly spoke. Dev was his usual boring self with his obsession with Indian supremacy. One wonders why up to now the PNC and ACDA haven’t told this man to pen a note on ethnic imbalance in land ownership, contracting service and commerce. I guess as an Indian supremacist, Dev has his work to do. It is for democratic nationalists in Guyana to expose his sickening polemics.
Teixeira took over the programme and Roopnaraine just listened attentively to her poisonous, miasmic, Machiavellian fictions. The WPA rock star from the seventies said not a word. Teixeira told her viewers that the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) did a study of racial composition in land titles and State scholarships and found no discrimination. Rupert Roopnaraine remained reticent.
He was part of the recent negotiations with the Government during the Linden crisis. He knew one of the demands was Region Ten membership in the land allocation committee because there were horror stories in the awards.
The WPA front man is losing his memory. In the Jagdeo libel case against me, it was brought out in court that the Office of the President and the Ministry of the Public Service refused to submit documents and statistics to the ERC consultant that investigated ethnic bias in the award of government scholarships. Teixeira went on to knock the PNC’s attitude to the ERC claiming that the PNC’s beef was with Juan Edghill.
The entire Guyana had a beef with Edghill being the Chairman of the ERC. And Guyanese were right. Months after holding that post, he joined the PPP campaign and exclaimed that if Jesus could have voted he would have chosen the PPP. All along Guyanese knew that Edghill was the wrong man for the ERC except the WPA front man, of course.