Latest update April 18th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 01, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
If you are a newspaper columnist in this country, confusion is always your companion. You simply cannot type a column and send it off to your editor right away. After four or five hours, you need to pen another commentary, because a dramatic action inside the corridors of power takes you by surprise. So you scramble to do your research for another article furiously while keeping an eye on the editor’s deadline.
You have to be in the commentator’s shoes to see this confusion. I would stay up late, do a piece and send it off early the next morning. By 4 PM the next day, a riveting news story breaks out about some silly or dangerous action by either the government or an individual power house. You have to rush back home to do your analysis because the readership expects your take on this breath-taking tale.
I doubt this happens even in the US. An analyst can start the morning doing his/her analysis on Obama, and for the rest of the day, there is absolutely nothing to report on Obama because for that day, Obama didn’t do anything that caused Americans to rush to their television sets. Not so with under Jagdeo. And it is certainly fast-moving under Ramotar.
The headache I have with Ramotar is that while Jagdeo was authoritarian he didn’t stumble so comically all the time as Ramotar does. You have to concentrate on Ramotar’s authoritarian continuation and you have to cope with his comical concatenation. It is certainly a burden to bear as a columnist.
As 2014 ends, it is customary for the analyst to look back at the shape of the nation for that year. I have done the first essay on that subject. It should have appeared in today’s issue. On Tuesday, after I returned home from a birthday celebration with my wife, I heard the news of a second scandalous tape. This time it involved Donald Ramotar in his capacity as President. I had to put on hold my review of Guyana in 2014.
Before we go any further, the context is important; remember context is everything in the action of a human being. A lawyer or a trained mind can think he is a smart ass by separating the personal from the public in the behaviour of a political office-holder. So a Minister goes to the race track and in an animated conversation driven by the use of alcohol said that homosexuality should not be legally recognized.
The smart ass can at least argue that the Minister was not performing his/her public duties when he/she made that remark and therefore cannot be chastised as discrediting his/her office. I think that postulation is untenable but at least there is analytical room to submit an argument.
In the case of the recording where it is purported to be the voice of Ramotar, he was performing his duty as President in an official visit to the interior.
Just before I continue, it is my opinion that the voice on the tape is Ramotar’s and I believe the Amerindian teacher when he complained that after the meeting a presidential guard slapped him. Mr. Ramotar is heard on the tape telling a citizen in front of others that given his criticism of Jagdeo, if Jagdeo was present, he might have received a slap from Jagdeo. Ramotar can also be heard describing the Amerindian man as stupid.
Anyone who saw Ramotar’s performance as the President of Guyana for the past three years, would not fail to see the irony in Ramotar’s depiction of the Amerindian citizen. For Ramotar to paint the man as stupid is so funny because Mr. Ramotar comes across as a stupid man.
If you want to see the manifestations of presidential stupidity, then wait to hear Mr. Ramotar’s explanation of the incident. The silly attitude has already begun. Mr. Ramotar’s favourite word has been employed in his defence – authenticity. This was the word he used to express his feeling about the Nandlall recording. Every recorded incident in which the leaders of the Government have been taped saying abominable, perverted things has to be authenticated.
Is Ramotar that foolish to think people have any doubt about whose voice is on that tape?
We come to the obvious question – have Mr. Jagdeo and Mr. Ramotar in the past slapped people who annoyed them with embarrassing questions? Mr. Ramotar must have believed that Jagdeo is such a person, for why then would he have told the gentleman that Jagdeo would have hit him? If Jagdeo and Ramotar have slapped people before then “monkey knows which limb to jump on.”
JAGDEO ADDING MORE DANGER TO GUYANA AND THE REGION
Apr 18, 2024
SportsMax – West Indies captain Hayley Matthews has been named Wisden’s leading Twenty20 Cricketer for 2023, as she topped all and sundry, including her male counterparts. Alan Gardner looks...Kaieteur News – Compliments of the Ministry of Education, our secondary school children are being treated to a stage... more
By Sir Ronald Sanders Waterfalls Magazine – On April 10, the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States... more
Freedom of speech is our core value at Kaieteur News. If the letter/e-mail you sent was not published, and you believe that its contents were not libellous, let us know, please contact us by phone or email.
Feel free to send us your comments and/or criticisms.
Contact: 624-6456; 225-8452; 225-8458; 225-8463; 225-8465; 225-8473 or 225-8491.
Or by Email: [email protected] / [email protected]