Guyana Observer News

Freddie Kissoon

It was at the last night of the wake that I heard that Prime Minister Sam Hinds was one of the persons paying tribute to Josh Ramsammy on the day of the funeral. At the wake, I spent a long time speaking to Parliamentarian Keith Scott, who had spent a long time with the Working People’s Alliance before he broke away. Had I known it was Keith who was in charge of preparing the programme for the funeral, I would have protested the Prime Minister’s inclusion; the reason being I believe that, given our friendship, Keith would have listened.

It was the next day I found out that it was Keith’s doing. So I sent a message with John Seeram, the UG Bursar, to tell him that it was unfair to the people who struggled for Guyana’s freedom to have the PM speak at Josh’s funeral. Not someone of the heroic stature of Josh Ramsammy. What could the PM say about Josh? Prime Minister Sam Hinds has been the second in charge of the Government of Guyana, and what has he done for the recognition of the great sacrifice of people like Josh Ramsammy? I remonstrated with Keith Scott.

He agreed the selection was not appropriate, but explained that it was the PM that pushed himself in and requested to talk. Keith further stated that he conveyed the request to the family and left it up to them to give the answer. I told Keith that the family was away from Guyana for thirty years and that he, Keith, should have guided the family in the decision. It was nonsense to have someone who is so high in the state machinery speak at the funeral service of a man who spent his entire life fighting against what the PPP Government stands for. So why didn’t the WPA invite PNC ministers at the funeral of Walter Rodney in 1980?

This is the same Prime Minister who was Prime Minister in 2000, when the Government of Guyana fired Dr. Ramsammy as Pro-Chancellor of the University of Guyana. It was a nasty piece of politics. At the cremation, Dr. Nanda Gopaul and I talked about it, and Dr. Gopaul said he would always say that he thought Josh’s firing was unjustified because he, Gopaul, was intimately involved with University issues at the time and he knew Josh meant well for the University. That dismissal was the turning point in Josh’s life. He wanted to resuscitate UG, where he spent a lifetime working. Josh invoked the wrath of President Jagdeo because he was not prepared to run UG along party lines.

This was the core of the problem. Josh Ramsammy saw himself as a professional administrator. He knew UG a million times better than anyone inside the Government at that time. As I told Moses Nagamootoo at the cremation on Saturday, I knew from talking to Josh that this incident had jolted his psychology. Josh was mentally hurt very badly over the silence of the society on what the PPP Government did to him. Let me boldly beat my own drum and assert that I sermonized on that tragic incident over and over again. But in Guyana and in the Diaspora, not a voice was raised. Really! What was PM Hinds doing at Josh’s funeral, much less giving a eulogy?

I asked his younger son at the wake if Josh’s political activities were the centre of the decision of the family to leave Guyana in 1976. He preferred not to talk about it, but conceded it must have figured in the final decision. Then he said to me: “What do you expect, when there was an attempted kidnap on my little sister?”

Herein lies the tremendous sacrifice of Dr. Joshua Reuben Ramsammy for the nation of Guyana. These people stayed and fought. They endured tremendous hardships. They put country above family. And what did their selflessness produce? The return to dictatorship.  I believe that once the PPP goes out of power, and a non-PPP, non PNC party wins the election, there must be erected a museum of Guyanese heroes, where the past will be preserved to feed the knowledge of younger generations.

The next generation must know the worth of Dr. Josh Ramsammy, Father Andrew Morrison, Dr Walter Rodney and so many others who contributed bravely to the social preservation of Guyana. I was sitting next to Dion Abraham, Ali Majid and Tacuma Ogunseye, all activists with the WPA from the seventies onwards, when I saw PM Hinds walk out. And I said to them that, imagine, this very man told the nation that the radio monopoly cannot be removed because we could become another Rwanda. I knew what Josh thought of that empty statement.