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Feb 04, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Kaieteur News – I’ve been around in political struggles a long time, so I think I know some of the actors fairly well. But still I don’t want to get a libel writ which is the easiest thing to receive in Guyana so I will not name the woman I am writing about.
Days before the no confidence motion (NCM), this woman met with all of the APNU+AFC parliamentarians without any absentee at the Office of the President (OP). The tone was not persuasive but intimidating. If it was not for that confrontation (that is how you can describe it – she confronted them), two AFC MPs, other than Charandass Persaud (Charran), would have voted for the NCM.
There was panic within the PNC and AFC on the NCM. The PNC and AFC were having nightmares because they knew that there would have been votes for the motion from within the circle of their own colleagues. I rang a certain APNU parliamentarian, who no longer sits in the House, to get his permission to quote what he told me one evening when I was walking my dog at the back of Giftland Mall. There was no answer so he remains unnamed.
He told me his name came up as one of those likely to vote for the NCM and in annoyance, he brought up the subject with the president. David Hinds told me of another APNU parliamentarian who the PNC felt would have voted for the NCM. I can anticipate David will say: “I had no such conversation with Freddie.” I swear on my parent’s grave that David told me that President Granger raised his voice at Clive Thomas and that the PNC had identified one of its own (not the MP who spoke to me at Giftland) who would vote with the PPP.
The PNC was in confusion about actually holding the vote because it knew something was going to happen. But two interventions allowed for mental calmness and thus the vote was held on December 21. One was the meeting at OP. Each MP assured the “big lady” that their vote against the NCM was solid. The second one was that Prime Minister Nagamootoo convinced Granger that the AFC vote against the NCM was assured. That explains Nagamootoo’s exclamation of “bring it on” when Jagdeo agreed to postpone the NCM until January. The PPP did bring it on and brought down Nagamootoo in the process.
Jagdeo outsmarted the PNC and AFC comprehensively which explains that since Burnham’s demise, the PNC has had a string of mediocre leaders. Jagdeo knew that both the PNC and AFC were concerned that at least three MPs were under suspicion. What Jagdeo cleverly did was to elevate the fears inside the APNU+AFC by submitting a further date in the next year (2019) for the debate.
Both the PNC and the AFC felt that Jagdeo needed more time to convert more APNU+AFC parliamentarians. But Jagdeo had no such intention. He knew the PPP would win whether by one or three votes so he invented the gambit to postpone and the PNC and AFC fell for it.
This columnist would have to pay out $99 million if he identifies the other two who would have joined Charran because a libel writ would come for sure. All three MPs – including Charran – had deep chagrin inside of them that expanded daily. For them, the AFC had betrayed them and the Guyanese people. The other two MPs buckled after the “big lady” threatened them. But Charran was a different kind of fish for three reasons.
One was Berbice. Charran felt that the AFC’s raison d’etre was in Berbice and the AFC had guillotined Berbice. As a Berbician, his rage was implacable after what happened to the sugar workers. Number two had to do with the AFC’s power-drunkenness. Charran was the regional MP for Berbice and was never consulted by the AFC. No more graphic evidence of this exists but inside the mouth of Khemraj Ramjattan.
Ramjattan said on the Naim Chan Show that at all times Amna Ally kept Charran abreast of the government’s Berbice policies. No other statement in politics could be more asinine. Why the AFC would leave it to the PNC’s General Secretary to inform an AFC parliamentarian and executive of what the government was doing in Berbice? Why not the AFC itself? For more on Ramjattan’s imbecilic outpourings on this issue see my column of Saturday, November 14, 2020: “Who do you believe – Ramjattan or Charran?” Finally, dignity was involved. Charran was one of the best known lawyers in Berbice, was well liked in Berbice and he felt disrespected that his pleadings to the AFC always went unanswered.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
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