Oh, the white man excuse again?

OCTOBER 31, 2015 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, FREDDIE KISSOON

Commentators and columnists have a favourite label they like to use to describe politicians they think deserve the label. The word is “fool.” It is a word you will find easily if you peruse any newspaper from any country. In the US, right wing-commentators, especially on Fox channel, are accustomed to calling Obama a fool. The television commentators on Fox use extremely rude vocabulary when assessing Obama. On the other hand, the liberal icon, Rachel Maddox, on MSNBC goes beyond the term “fool” in analyzing leaders from the Republican Party. This columnist thinks former President Donald Ramotar may have earned the label when he made a reference to slavery and foreign interference to rebut the comments of the EU envoy in Guyana after the envoy explained that EU sugar money was withheld during the last months of Ramotar’s presidency because of the prorogation of Parliament. Where was this reference when Ramotar’s party, the PPP, went all over the world requesting foreign intervention against the Burnham and Hoyte Presidencies? It was Roger Luncheon during the Ramotar Presidency that accused ABC countries of interfering in Guyana’s internal affairs when they asserted the urgency of local government elections. But it was the same Luncheon, together with Cheddi Jagan, who couldn’t be separated from the coattail of Jimmy Carter, when Carter negotiated far-reaching changes to the Electoral Commission and the way elections were conducted. It was Ramotar and others who clung to Jagan whenever Jagan traveled from 1964 to 1992, to beg Western Government to help remove the Burnham and Hoyte Presidencies. In fact, the very Ramotar was part of the PPP delegations at many meetings with ABC diplomats in 1991 when they boldly told the PPP that in the process of conducting free and fair elections should the PPP triumph it has to drop its socialist goals. The West insisted on a continuation of Hoyte’s structural adjustment blueprint and that Jagan must have businessmen in his Cabinet. Where was the cry then, of what the white man did to us through slavery? Where was the cry then of white man intervention? The fundamental question that must be asked of Ramotar was, “on whose behalf was he speaking when he sought to chastise the EU envoy with his reference to slavery and interference?” How many Guyanese believe that the EU was interfering in Guyana’s internal affairs when it withheld the sugar money? How many Guyanese believe Priya Manickchand when she engaged in undiplomatic gyrations, distasteful gesticulations and insulting grammatical undulations at the home of the American Ambassador, when she accused him of interfering in Guyana’s politics with his call for Local Government Elections? Let me be pellucid to Mr. Ramotar, at the time the EU withheld the money over the prorogation of Parliament, this citizen supported that EU decision and would have loved to see crippling sanctions on the Ramotar government. As it stands today, October 2015, Mr. Ramotar does not speak for me so I do not endorse his sentiments in reply to the EU envoy that includes references to European benefits from slavery. I believe I am essentially capturing the mental mood of the population when I say that a majority of Guyanese does not support the contents of his chastisement of the EU Ambassador. Post-colonial dictators have a nemesis that is so scary to them that they believe it is a living apparition – international rejection of corrupt, unaccountable, oligarchic government. Post-colonial dictators have a word for it – Western interference. The accusation is always accompanied by additional accusations two of which are naturally expected – the ravages of colonialism and the legacy of slavery. Those charges came easily to Mr. Ramotar because they are in the songbook of every post-colonial dictator. Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan tyrant who was more monstrous than anything Western colonialism produced, had that as his favourite ballad. It was poetic justice that he was killed while hiding in a sewage pipe. No European colonial leader in any anti-colonial uprising was ever caught hiding in a sewage pipe. Interestingly enough, Ramotar avoided in his response to the EU diplomat, any mention of minority government. Again I say Ramotar was not bright enough to see the eyes of the world would have focused on him once he became a minority President. A minority government has a ring of dictatorship to it. Remember you are governing without the consent of the majority who voted in the General Elections. Why would friendly government support your policies when they lack a democratic launching pad? Ramotar still can get it. The West wanted him to open up to the parliamentary majority. That is why they weren’t eager to send aid money to his regime.