Guyana Observer News

Freddie Kissoon

I did not take the time, for the purpose of this essay, to quote from the Mirror newspaper on the PPP’s reaction to the process whereby the then Chancellor of the Judiciary Justice Keith Massiah left his position on the Bench and took up a partisan political appointment with the Cabinet under the presidency of Mr. Desmond Hoyte.

I simply could not have been bothered doing that task because the material is literally inexhaustible when it comes to printed criticism the PPP made against the policies of Forbes Burnham, the very policies they now copy from Burnham with plagiaristic shamelessness. We will look at the case of Attorney General Charles Ramson below.

I was very young then, but could remember the tempest the PPP created against the National Security Act. Now those very people like Moses Nagamootoo, who waded into the Act in the Mirror, and Indra Chandrapaul, who was arrested under the Act, voted for wiretapping legislation. PPP activists murdered policemen who were guarding the Corentyne Highway toll gates because the Burnham Government imposed a tariff for its use. Look today at the exorbitant cost to cross the Berbice Bridge.

Incidentally, there was a photograph recently in the newspaper of the Takatu Bridge built by the Brazilians. It has a wide walkway for pedestrians. The ugly Berbice Bridge has no such facility. I did say in my Saturday column that NBS has bought over CLICO’s investment in the bridge. I hope the media tackles the CLICO Chief Executive Officer on this.

Rewind the clock back to the seventies and eighties and imagine the arson that would have devastated the sugar estates if Burnham had imposed those frightening tolls on the Berbice Bridge. Yes, the material on the PPP’s condemnation of the policies of the Burnham Government is inexhaustible.

What about Jim Jones? The two PPP propaganda sheets, the Mirror and Thunder, worked overtime on this one. But what about Roger Khan who openly told Guyanese that he was instrumental in fighting the Buxton gunmen, and that he had helped to secure the release of kidnapped US Embassy personnel, Stephen Lesniak? How could Khan have endured in these types of activities without having logistical support from high political actors in the Government?

When one studies the sixteen-year (going on to seventeen) rule of the PPP, the chicken and egg question comes up. Which came first? On bad policies, which came first, the PNC or PPP? This question is posed within the context of the destruction of Guyana through nasty politics. So who really started paramountcy of the party? Which party was the first to believe that the state media should be put exclusively at the access of the ruling party alone?

Which of the two parties first destroyed the principle of the neutral civil servant at the service of the nation and not the ruling party?

Hard as it is to accept, the brutal, harsh facts point in many instances to the early PPP Government in the sixties. But let us leave that polemic for another column; the incontrovertible fact remains that the PPP stood in opposition for twenty-eight years and devastated the PNC for practising the art of total power. But look at the identical twins today.

We return to Charles Ramson. He was the Attorney General in the Cabinet of the ruling party. This man, then, contrary to existing tradition in the Caricom region, with one exception that was mentioned above in the case of Justice Massiah, then became a Court of Appeal Judge.

Is that the end of Mr. Ramson’s presence in the higher echelons of the judiciary? Mr. Ramson will sit in the Cabinet presumably until Mr. Jagdeo’s tenure ends in August 2011. But will he return to the judiciary before that or will another PPP regime appoint him a Court of Appeal judge?

So the PNC did it. Now the PPP did it. If you continue with those examples, you end up with identical twins. I remember how Permanent Secretaries used to attend the PNC’s congresses. The returning officer at the PPP’s elections last August was a very high-level public servant that in the tradition of the Commonwealth should have nothing to do with politics.

So who really started this paramountcy thing? Even if you cannot answer that, you have to concede one graphic fact – the PPP’s political culture is not dissimilar from the PNC when the PNC was in power. We all fought for free and fair elections. The elections brought an exchange, not a change.

The mockery of democracy goes on, but sadly enough this mockery is also a tragedy. The tragedy of Guyana goes on.