Donald Ramotar needs to be taught the meaning and contextual usage of words

SEPTEMBER 22, 2015 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, FREDDIE KISSOON

In a letter in the newspaper, former President Donald Ramotar published the following opinion; “Since the beginning of the 11th Parliament, Head of State, David Granger, made a statement about the need for a Code of Conduct for members of the National Assembly. “His intuition seems to be to curtail and stop heckling in the Chambers.” This certainly is the wrong use of the word “intuition.” I believe even a high school student may be aware of the exact function of the word, “intuition.” We all grew up with that word because we heard it so many times by people in our home and by the ordinary person. Intuition is a word taken from philosophy and denotes the cognition of an object without prior empirical knowledge of the said object. Translated to semantics it means a sensory perception that something may happen based on a feeling that has no existence in factual objectivity. It is a likely prediction of what the person thinks may happen though he/she is uncertain because there are no facts to definitively make the prediction. Here is an example. You are in court and the case seems not to be going in the direction of the plaintiff or the defence but somehow you feel the judge will not accept a certain witness. So you say to your friend, “My intuition is that he may not accept that person as a proper witness.” On the other hand, if the judge continuously rules in favour of the plaintiff in points of objections, you can say, “I believe this judge will rule against us.” That is a belief which has nothing in common with intuition. Your belief has been derived from your assessment of a factual situation. In the case of Ramotar, he confused “intuition” with intention. In other words President Granger has an intention to confront the mischief of heckling in Parliament, not an intuition to stop heckling. I don’t want to belabour the point but it is an ugly grammatical lapse for a man who was the President of a modern, educated nation. More importantly, I want to look at the letter against the background of the mind of Ramotar. Ramotar’s misssive is titled, “Curtailing heckling in Parliament is another ominous sign.” Is that a priority in the mind of Ramotar – President Granger’s intention to stop heckling in Parliament? Doesn’t Ramotar have anything more serious on his agenda? He was asked, recently, for his thoughts on the leasing of Red House to the PPP for $1,000 a month. His response was that he saw nothing wrong with the arrangement. Ramotar saw nothing improper with the lease of public property to the PPP. This is property put in the hands of a political party; not even an NGO whose leadership has term limits, not even a state institution, but a political party. Why should the people of Guyana accept that? So because Burnham was born in Kitty, Jagan in Port Mourant, Rodney in Werk-en-Rust, Eddy Grant in Plaisance, we can lease part of those districts to the families for commemorative purposes? Jagan dwelled in Red House when he was Premier. He lived on a property owned by the state. If the PPP wants that property to permanently celebrate the life and work of Cheddi Jagan then the legal thing was for the Cabinet during the PPP reign to have conducted a real estate valuation and sell the asset to the PPP. You call that an act “above board.” Surely, Nadira Jagan who is one of the persons named in the lease could have helped to raise the sum. She is a Canadian jeweler. The $1000 monthly rent is a depravity which the APNU-AFC administration must terminate in the coming weeks. The Red House lease scandal is just one of thousands that occurred under the hegemony of the Jagdeo/ Ramotar cabal. There is the GAWU Kingston building. That was prime real estate that the PPP Government sold to GAWU. That building was worth hundreds of millions. GAWU got it for a song. In “Bookers’ Quarters” off Sheriff Street, the Cheddi Jagan Government sold a state house that Minister of Trade, Shree Chand, occupied for three million dollars. That property because of its location would easily have been purchased by a foreign government for over a hundred million dollars. In fact, most of the residents in that gated community are diplomatic personnel. So what is the subject of the next Donald Ramotar’s letter to the press? Whatever it is you can predict the subject would be arid and banal like the “intuition” of President Granger to stop heckling in Parliament.