Some things leave more questions than answers. When the Coalition government moved to close the inefficient sugar estates, the critics of the closure highlighted the benefits they saw in keeping these estates open.
One benefit, they said, was the foreign currency that they got from selling sugar, no matter how unprofitable the sugar production was.
Today, the business community is complaining about a shortage of foreign currency. Indeed, they are getting nothing from sugar but they are getting from oil, much more than they were getting from sugar. Yet foreign currency is short.
This suggests that the money is not being spent in Guyana, or if it is, it is being spent on things like infrastructure. People are complaining.
When the foreign currency complaint started, the government said that there was no shortage. Then Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo said that the government would immediately resolve the situation. Two days ago, he promised to seek to resolve the situation. Somebody is not being honest.
The foreign currency issue is not the only thing that has been made to attract the attention. A few weeks ago, Tacuma Ogunseye of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) called on the police and the army not to be misused by the government.
He might have appealed to race since the bulk of the army and the police is black. He also used a description of Indians in India that people of Indian ancestry in Guyana found extremely distasteful.
That became a talking point. There were condemnations from a number of corners, most of them aligned to the ruling party. The firestorm did not end there. Some inside the main opposition party took umbrage to comments by another WPA speaker.
In the end, the opposition said that there is freedom within its ranks. The Opposition Leader told a press conference that Tacuma Ogunseye’s choice of words may have been unfortunate but his contention was sound.
In response, the WPA said that Norton’s reaction was seen as a comradely criticism. Meanwhile, Jagdeo kept talking about what the police should do, instigating charges none lesser than treason. Well, that has not happened so far.
What people did not know was that this issue was being used as a distraction. And there needed to be distractions from the foreign currency situation.
If there is anyone good at creating distractions it is Bharrat Jagdeo. He sought to create another distraction. At a press conference, he suggested that the present crop of people in the WPA might have conspired with the PNC to kill Walter Rodney.
That comment was interesting, coming as it did after an inquiry was conducted. That inquiry in no way linked the WPA to Rodney’s death. Where did Jagdeo’s comment come from? Jagdeo’s mind.
He is an interesting person. He criticises anyone who opposes him. The former Prime Minister Hamilton Green is by no stretch of the imagination, a young man. However, he detailed his reasons for objecting to the PPP declaring the late President Cheddi Jagan as the father of the nation.
Jagdeo did not take kindly to this. Hammy Green was a geriatric and a fossil. One would want to believe that Hammy Green was senile if one took Jagdeo’s description seriously—far from it.
The former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran was not spared. He has been critical of the government’s financial shenanigans. He has often questioned their spending and their budgetary arrangements. At the same press conference in which Jagdeo described Hammy Green as a fossil, he also described Goolsarran as a fossil.
All the older people taking on his government are fossils. Head of the Guyana Human Rights Association Mike McCormack has also been deemed a fossil. In my eye, for a fossil, he is teaching the Attorney General Anil Nandlall the law as it relates to the Companies Act.
This habit of Jagdeo’s of putting labels to people has been around for a long time. When the late Janet Jagan dared to criticise his actions, he went on record to say that she was a private citizen and had no voice. And he was right, but utterly disrespectful of those who have gone before him.
He is still a young man, not yet 60 but if he lives as long as Hammy and McCormack and those he deems to be fossils, then he would appreciate age and its glory.
He had a label for me too. He described me as notorious. When I heard the description I was surprised. What am I notorious for? He hasn’t said and if he meets me he will never explain. He will simply smile and tell me that such is the way of politics.
I have once been a teacher and a reporter. I thought that I was good at both. I may be notorious for discerning his foibles and his idiosyncrasies.
But his description of me is neither here nor there. I pride myself in seeing through the veil he uses to fool people. He has a huge ego. He likes being called Dr Jagdeo when he never studied for one like those who are Doctors but never fight to be so recognized. I don’t go around having people call me Dr Harris. And like Jagdeo I got an Honourary one some years ago.
With his ego, Jagdeo could not stand being challenged by Moses Nagamootoo and Khemraj Ramjattan and Dr Henry Jeffrey.
He told me that he misread Rear Admiral Gary Best when he sold him the plot of land at Pradoville in Sparendaam. Obviously, he thought that he controlled Best. Good for him.
But for all his shortcomings he still brings a smile to my face, like whenever I remember something funny.
