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Sep 28, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Do you think it was just accidental that Ramon Gaskin testified in three libel trials for Dr. Walter Ramsahoye? They knew each other from the late sixties.
Both are entering their late seventies. Do you think it is accidental that Mr. Tony Vieira and Mr. Vic Insannally worked together on the process of the Essequibo transmitting license issue in Essequibo?
Let me choose my words carefully. I don’t want to receive libel papers from these gentlemen. You get a libel writ for writing the most innocuous words in this country. You will eventually win but you still have to find a lawyer and climb the court steps.
It only happens here. Could you imagine, a man wanted on a criminal offence, is hiding in some secret place in another country; Interpol has been given notification, yet that man has sued this paper for libel for printing words about fraud at GPL.
And he is wanted in Guyana for that very thing. Since he will be charged if he steps into Guyana, then how is he going to defend the libel? But the man still sued.
So yes, I have chosen my words carefully because I do not want to get a libel writ from Mr. Vieira and Mr. Insannally. I have not accused them of any wrongdoing. Another person has done that and given the importance of the complaint, I don’t see what is wrong with the publication of the complaint.
But let’s move to the old boy’s network. If you examine all , not two or three, but all the boards of the top private companies in Guyana, they consist of people who knew each other and worked together and socialized with each other from the sixties and seventies.
Look at the diplomatic appointments. They are all people who knew PNC leaders from the seventies. Ms. Clarissa Rhiel has no experience in foreign affairs and was just plucked from the legal profession and made an envoy. I did an entire column on Halim Majeed. Mr. Majeed was very close to the Burnham administration.
When President Hoyte de-Burnhamized his administration, Mr. Majeed went out of politics. He migrated and almost thirty years have passed but he was brought back to serve as our Ambassador to Cuba. It is unbelievable that Hamilton Green, in his eighties, was made Chairman of Central Housing and Planning Authority.
It was no accident that the three persons from City Hall who went to Mexico to see the parking meters knew each other and worked together beginning from the eighties – Oscar Clarke, Mayor Chase-Green and Royston King. I never spoke or met former Chancellor, Cecil Kennard, but I would argue that he is too long in the position of the Police Complaints Authority. The same I would argue for Mr. Juman Yassin of the Guyana Olympics Association.
One of the reasons I argued for people to boycott the mainstream parties in the Local Government Elections, was to erode the influence of the old boys’ network.
If the Council was dominated by those young people from Team Benschop, Youths for Local Government etc, then it would have reduced the possibility of backroom deals with the old boys’ network.
Sherod Duncan stands out. He spent about eight years at UG and is only 35 years of age. He does not know the old boys’ network thus the problem Chase-Green has with him. He does not know how to play the game. The AFC has a young councilor named, Carlyle Goring. Goring told me he will not let the older heads in the Council ram anything down his throat. And why would he say that? Because he doesn’t know the old boys’ network.
Goring told me that he will confront King and the Mayor if they continue to do things that are not in the interest of the people of Kitty that voted him in under the constituency system.
What this country needs are more Duncans and Gorings. What this country needs are term limits in organizations so leadership will keep revolving and younger people will develop leadership qualities.
But it has to start with encouragement from the government and we are not seeing it from that source.
I was the guest for two consecutive weeks on the Cuffy 250 programme titled African Drums on HBTV Channel 9 and on both occasions the young people lamented the fact that the Coalition Government does not seem willing to give the young people their rightful place. In the meantime, the old boys’ network “run thing” and will continue to run things.
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