By: resist

resist — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:00:55 +0000

Dear Editor
I am talking about the man who parted the sea but not the ancient one from the Bible; I mean the one from Guyana who parted the sea twice. The first time was when he did it to allow him to return to Freedom House for the 2006 elections.
The second occasion was when it allowed him access to the Ocean View Hotel to invite the PPP leadership to his 60th birthday party.
Moses Nagamootoo has shown his anti-dictatorship balance sheet in a letter in Wednesday’s Kaieteur News (16-04-08) letter column. I wasn’t interested in reading the item because the caption consisted of the usual jazz; “Kissoon you are dead wrong.”
I wasn’t curious in the least because I felt it was one of those infantile letters that the Office of the President and GINA turn out on a daily basis trying desperately to prove Frederick Kissoon wrong instead of removing the stain of dictatorship fully emblazoned on the fabric of the government.
The occasion for Moses screaming that “Kissoon you are dead wrong” was because of what I wrote in one of my Sunday columns. I went through a list of PPP leaders at the apex of the organisation and didn’t find any prosecution or persecution of them by the Burnham regime. Moses yelled out in that Wednesday missive of his that I was incorrect because he was victimized, oppressed and brutalized by the Burnham junta.
I was in two minds as to what to make of his enumeration – the endless times he was victimized. Does Moses know the truth when he sees it? Is it possible that he embellished his recollections?
It is a harsh thing to say about an anti-dictatorship fighter. But many of our anti-dictatorship activists from the seventies and eighties turned out to be little Burnhams. These little Burnhams are from the PPP and are ruining Guyana.
I need to remind readers that Moses is a parliamentarian from the party that has produced these mini-Mussolinis. But Moses does have a problem with discerning reality and he does have a tendency to turn facts into fiction and fiction into truths.
This is the man who told Guyana about the not-so-nice side of the PPP. He spoke about corruption; he accused the President of not speaking the truth on a matter concerning Khemraj Ramjattan.
Mr. Ramjattan claimed that the President accused him of supplying information to the US Embassy. The President denied it. Moses said he was at the meeting and he corroborated Ramjattan’s version. He wrote letters and articles in the print media lamenting the loss of respect for the Jagan legacy in the PPP Government. Then came the end of Moses Nagamootoo.
He wrote in the media that at one of the statutory meetings of the executive committee of the PPP, he uttered a statement that perhaps all five-year-old kids who have the West Indian blood in them have mouthed off – “I dun with y’all.” The next thing he knew was that he was written to by the General Secretary of the PPP, Mr. Donald Ramotar, accepting his “resignation” and thanking him for his service to the PPP.
Now juxtapose this Nagamootoo with the following Nagamootoo. At his 60th birthday party to which was invited all the PPP first and second tier leaders plus others including persons who think that the PPP Government is an elected dictatorship, he told the gathering, as the third speaker after Mrs. Jagan and Mr. Jagdeo, who according to Nagamootoo, were his two major detractors in the PPP, that there was never any disagreement with him and his party and him and the President.
Commonsense should have told Nagamootoo that there were persons among the audience to whom he spilt his guts when he was ostracized by the Freedom House kings. One close friend of Nagamootoo told me that when he listened to Moses’s delivery he could have fallen through the floor. It was an incredibly deceptive outpouring.
It was that speech on his birthday that has caused me to be extremely dismissive of Moses Nagamootoo. Should a nation trust such a politician? What has Nagamootoo learnt from over 40 years in politics? All Nagamootoo had to say was that people break up to make up and that he has made up with his party and his party has made up with him. Against this background, should one believe all the items on his list of harassments by the Burnham Government?
My own feeling is that Moses is correct in the major incidents he described. But in his enumeration lies an important lesson for the Guyanese people.
Here is an appropriate quote from his letter; “Not once was I convicted on any of these spurious charges.” That statement is going to create a nightmare for Ravi Dev as he continues his Carl Friedrich characteristics of dictatorship.
After describing for readers the dozens of times he was arrested and put before the courts by the Burnham state machinery, Nagamootoo concluded that; “Not once was I convicted on any of these spurious charges.” How does Nagamootoo feel as a PPP parliamentarian when Mark Benschop addresses him on Benschop’s five years of incarceration on charges that a school boy would not believe?
This man spent five years in the Camp Street jail on a treason accusation for which the evidence was absolutely non-existent.
This occurred not under Carl Friedrich’s totalitarian model but by a government directed by the PPP of which Nagamootoo is a parliamentarian. Nagamootoo has to ask the question why Burnham never convicted him but Benschop had to spend five years in jail.
How does Nagamootoo feel that he had to endure those repressive years under Burnham but look at Guyana today? Does Nagamootoo know that his party’s power in government is protected by dictatorial clauses of the constitution of that very man, Burnham? Has Nagamootoo asked himself where the brave ones who once fought alongside him are today? Shall we recap their tortuous roads too?
Tacuma Ogunseye spent three years in jail; Moses was never convicted. David Hinds spent three years in jail; Moses was never convicted. Does Moses want to know about the balance-sheet of Rupert Roopnarine? Is it true, Moses, that the subsidy was withdrawn from Critchlow Labour College partly because Dr. Roopnarine was the principal of the institution?
Donald Rodney almost lost his life when the bomb that killed his brother, Walter, severely injured him. After the PPP came to power in 1992, Donald could not get a single contract as a quantity surveyor. He had to migrate.
What about me, Moses? While Burnham was happy to employ your comrades in the PPP leadership, I had to suffer an employment ban by Burnham. I will leave out the rest of my balance sheet but I should mention the time I was pushed off a moving UG bus and broke my back.
David Hinds, Dr. Roopnarine, Tacuma Ogunseye, Donald Rodney and I are still struggling for democracy in Guyana, Moses. I will be in the marches in support of press freedom. I want to travel up to Berbice to show solidarity with the enraged sugar workers. Let me scream out to you Moses: “The struggle continues.”
Frederick Kissoon

Comments on: Freddie Kissoon is wrong Forbes Burnham’s rule was an abomination - Moses Nagamootoo

By: resist