‘I don’t know about that; next question please--Freddie Kissoon

JULY 11, 2015 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, FREDDIE KISSOON

They say humans are the most barefaced animals that nature produced. A cat will eat your dinner, then, as he sees you, will run away. A criminal will enter your home, eat your dinner then attack you. It is the same with overthrown dictators. If allowed to go free after they are removed from power, you will meet them at the supermarket or at the gas pump, and they will never for one fleeting momen, agree with you that some of their mistakes were nightmarish. A party that has ruled Guyana for twenty-three years during which every conceivable law in the land was broken, every conceivable moral code was violated, every financial procedure was breached, every act of indecency was committed, now holds weekly press conferences and pontificates on the rights and wrongs in the political and legal administration of Guyana. Clement Rohee, prior to the prorogation of Parliament in November 2014, was one of the world’s longest serving Parliamentarians and Cabinet Ministers. Mr. Rohee has been a crucial policy-maker in Guyana for the past twenty- three years. He was there in the Cabinet under Cheddi and Janet Jagan. He was there in the Cabinet after Jagdeo had gone. This man holds a weekly press briefing in his capacity as General Secretary of his organization at the PPP head office, ironically named Freedom House and he is on a rampage against the new government. He zeroes in on the upsurge in crime. He lashes the Government on the 2 am closure of nightclubs. But does this man possess the moral authority to criticize even a wild animal that tramples on your vegetable garden? This very man as Minister of International Trade had his non-immigrant and diplomatic visas suspended in 2005 by the Americans for six months. Nine years later, this gentleman has not seen it proper to explain why the Americans acted this way. He cannot. The media cannot publish the facts on the visa imbroglio because if Mr. Rohee sues (and he will sue), the diplomats at the US Embassy in Georgetown will not testify. The Embassy will not respond to court subpoena for documents. Diplomatic protocol prevents the Embassy from involvement in court matters. So unless Rohee explains himself, the Guyanese people will not know. I am quite prepared to tell people what I know of this visa incident. It was this man who as Home Affairs Minister told the nation that he didn’t speak to Commander Clifton Hicken during the protest in Linden in July 2013 when three unarmed protestors were shot dead by the police. In the Commission of Inquiry, phone records showed that he was in communication with Hicken. Rohee was Home Affairs Minister when two policemen at the Leonora Police Station tortured a fifteen-year-old youth by setting his reproductive parts on fire. These two policemen were promoted. The boy was awarded damages in the High Court. Rohee as part of the Cabinet, agreed to appeal the decision. Rohee was a senior Minister and one of the top decision-makers in the ruling party when Ronald Waddell was assassinated in front of his home and Courtney Crum-Ewing was assassinated just before the 2015 election campaign. “Sash” Sawh’s brother-in-law implicated the state in the murder. Rohee was a senior Minister when Sawh was murdered. This man was the Minister of Foreign Affairs when in his Ministry the worse forms of ethnic purging in any Caribbean country occurred. Mr. Rohee was part of a government that presided over the decline of every aspect of life in this country and this descent in social madness didn’t take place over three months or three years but twenty three years. This same man from now until he leaves his role as General-Secretary of the PPP will continue to hold his weekly press briefings and he is so barefaced that he will not answer even one question about the millions of immorally repugnant violations that took place during the 23-year reign of the PPP. With cynical nonchalance, Rohee, with his comical gesticulation, will say, “I don’t know about that.” Most of the little dictators that despoiled Guyana under the Jagdeo/Ramotar reign are in the opposition benches in Parliament. They like their former Presidents, Jagdeo and Ramotar, will be part of the press conference circus that the PPP will put on every week. Mr. Jagdeo as Opposition Leader will hold his own press briefs and you can expect from all of them, the automatic response when asked about their acts that almost destroyed Guyana, “I don’t know about that.”