Marx is dead. Jagan is dead. The PPP is dying - Freddie Kissoon
Freddie Kissoon - This song is sung out. This bell is rung outIf there is anyone in the PPP who has come to the realization that the PPP’s role in history has been reduced to a farce after fifteen years of nasty, ugly, inane, discriminatory, corrupt, incestuous, paranoid, unproductive, uncaring and slowly disintegrating governance, it is Mr. Clement Rohee.
Mr. Rohee may not be a stellar performer as a minister. He may not be a minister that inspires hope in his subjects. He may not be a minister that junior ones want to emulate (especially after he was heavily criticized by his mentor Mrs. Jagan in her Mirror column about his callously dismissive view of torture). He may not be emblazoned with the milk of political kindness. He may not be possessed of the intellectual heights to understand the poetic essence of history. But he is the only sensible one on the ship of fools.
Of all the PPP leaders who know that things have fallen apart, that the PPP has lost its image and credibility in the world, that the PPP may be facing a humiliating collapse, and that PPP leaders’ only surviving game is to revert to past glory, it is Mr. Rohee.
Go back seven years through the letter pages and you will find that Mr. Rohee is the only PPP captain that stays clear of any defence of government’s policies. But instead he recites ad nauseum, the mantra of the PPP’s role in the anti-dictatorship struggle of the seventies and eighties. For all his immense political and intellectual shortcomings, Mr. Rohee is sensible to know which limb to climb on.
The pathway he is going to avoid is to cite the record of the PPP administration since 1992. This is where he knows he will be vulnerable. Mr. Rohee is not going to enter into any exchange with any PPP critic because he knows he will be pressed to explain an unusual embarrassment in the history of Caricom’s relationship with the US and probably the world.
As the Minister of International Trade, he was refused any type of visas from the US Embassy to travel. Only if the US has a strained relation with an unfriendly government would it resort to such action. For six months, the US Embassy refused Mr. Rohee a visa. Then when he got one, it was a single entry. At the time of writing, I do not know if he has been accorded a multi-entry permit.
Mr. Rohee has never talked about the visa imbroglio publicly. He has never summoned the willingness to fulfill his moral obligation to those whose votes he requested to explain to them why the US Embassy did what it did. Much to the frustration of hundreds of thousands of Guyanese in and out of this country, such a politician was reelected in 2006. Mr. Rohee’s presence in the Government of Guyana is a source of emotional discomfort to me. At a dinner in early 2006 at Pegasus with a high-ranking US Embassy official in the presence of one of Guyana’s most prominent citizens, I was given the reason for the visa rejection. I was asked to offer my solemn word that I would not publish the Embassy’s rationale. I have kept my obligation.
I noted the diplomat requested that I “not” print the Embassy’s reason. He did not say “never”. Last year, I took steps to free myself from that promise by contacting him overseas but he turned me down. I have to keep secret information that the Guyanese people should know about one of their most powerful leaders. But I guess I owed that gentleman my word of honour.
Mr. Rohee is smart enough to know that the only thing that could work is to serenade deeply angered PPP supporters with the glories of the past; with tall stories of their failed leader, Cheddi Jagan’s fabled achievements. Rohee is like the Machiavellian fox. He scents when there is an opportunity for him to mount the pulpit of reminiscences. Two such occasions presented themselves recently. One was provided by me. The other by the Speaker of the Assembly, Mr. Ralph Ramkarran.
I had mentioned in one of my columns recently that during the demonstration against President Desmond Hoyte’s budget outside Parliament in 1989, the police took away Mr. Rohee, then they grabbed me shortly afterwards. It never occurred to me to hide the fact that Mr. Rohee was arrested. Why should I? It happened.
Like a vulture, Mr. Rohee jumped on that accolade. It just shows how jaded and tarnished are these failed PPP leaders that they would grab any mention of a past action to bolster their rapidly vanishing credibility. He quickly penned a letter to the Kaieteur News extolling his capture by the policemen on that day in 1989. Poor, Mr. Rohee! He wanted the Guyanese people to know he fought in the past. And a fool like me presented him with the occasion to gloat.
We come now to the comical part. Let’s quote what Rohee told the Speaker who chastised him for speaking irrelevancies during last Thursday’s session of Parliament as taken from this newspaper; “I will still comment on it somewhere outside of Parliament because we believe in Parliament and extra-parliamentary ways of working and while you have control in Parliament, you certainly don’t have control over us outside of Parliament.”
Here we see how clever Mr. Rohee is trying to be. Mr. Rohee chose his words and his confrontation with the Speaker neatly and carefully. But it was meant to be a charade and masquerade. Mr. Rohee wanted to come across to viewers and readers as a fiery and radical Jaganite who in the days of struggle against Burnham could take their troubles to the people outside of Parliament.
But it will not work. Mr. Rohee has only come across as a comical act. The enemy is now the PPP. The people outside of Parliament have no more use for the PPP and its government. There is no confrontation between Mr. Ramkarran and Mr. Rohee. Mr. Rohee is Mr. Ramkarran’s biggest supporter for the PPP’s presidential slot in 2011. But Mr. Rohee wants citizens to feel that he is still a fighter. Mr. Rohee’s strategy of returning to the PPP days in the opposition will deceive no one. That song is sung out. That bell is rung out. No amount of recitations of what the PPP did during the days of rigged election can save the PPP.
It was a nice try on the part of Mr. Rohee to come across as a fighting Cheddi Jagan in a Burnham-dominated Parliament. Forget it, Rohee! It has failed! Give us a break! Marx is dead. Jagan is dead. The PPP is dying. And I am not feeling too well myself.
