June 27 2018
Denis Chabrol of Demerara Waves called me for a comment on the legal defeat of Bharrat Jagdeo in the presidential term limit case. The first thing that came out of my mouth was a comparison between Burnham and Jagdeo. I told Chabrol that Burnham was concerned with confronting those who posed a direct threat to him like Walter Rodney, but Jagdeo as president was willing to victimize and repress any critic of his government.
He was an intolerant leader that was not prepared to rule even with a modicum of restraint. The publisher of this newspaper told me that I am free to quote him, and I am repeating that quote for the third time in these columns. Mr. Glenn Lall said that President Ramotar indicated to him that Mr. Jagdeo insisted that the GRA charge him over the duty free controversy.
Jagdeo was no longer the president, yet had the power to victimize those he didn’t like. Imagine if it wasn’t for term limits in 2011, he would have been president after 2011. Imagine how many persons would have lost their lives in despair.
I quoted a few weeks ago what Anil Nandlall told me and I am repeating it here. I told Anil that I admired his legal erudition, and therefore I expected him to tell Jagdeo that presidents don’t sue academics for their intellectual analyses, and that he should have dissuaded Jagdeo from suing me. Nandlall told me he did advise Jagdeo not to sue. Imagine this tyrannical fool and foolish tyrant keeps accusing the President and the Government of naked racism, and has challenged the president to debate the issue, yet had the temerity to sue me for merely referring to him as an ideological racist.
This is the man that wanted to rule Guyana again in 2020 after enjoying 12 years of de jure authority (1999-2011) and three years of unofficial power during the Medvedev syndrome of 2011-2015 under Donald Ramotar. This working class boy from Unity village on the East Coast tasted power, compliments of the Stalinist/fascist instincts of Janet Jagan, and became morbidly obsessed with it.
This working class boy, by the time he demitted office, became the personal, intimate friends of some of the richest men in Guyana. He became fascinated with power and money. But in his world, the two were intricately connected.
Theoretically, power and money are not necessarily intertwined. US presidents and European Prime Ministers, Chinese, Indian and Brazilian heads of government have formidable global power, but they do not have wealth. In the case of Guyana, Jagdeo used power to acquire wealth. This combination he wanted to have forever. So with the wealth he possessed, he used it to prolong power. This sickening journey ended yesterday in the island of Trinidad where the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) ruled that a Guyanese president can only serve two terms.
I am still at a loss at the poor public relations of the present government. President Jagdeo has abused power in the most heinous ways and facilitated a devouring machine of corruption, yet the colossal facts of his dictatorship are yet to be laid in front of the eyes of the Guyanese people. I believe Jagdeo enjoys continuous support from Indian constituencies because of prodigious mistakes the APNU+AFC regime is making, and goes on making, but these very constituencies are yet to see the extent to which Jagdeo presided over a Draculean kleptocracy.
The current court case of former Minister Jennifer Westford has revealed some interesting details which have not been adequately covered by the press, but which need to be highlighted, because it provides an understanding of how money was used by the Jagdeo presidency.
We keep hearing of presidential immunity, but so far no lawyer has offered an opinion as to if a president, under the Guyana constitution, is shielded from prosecution from all acts that he performed while in office. There is the viewpoint that some acts of a president under that constitution do not constitute official duties. My own feeling is that Mr. Jagdeo should be investigated for violations and illegalities that fall outside of official duties.
I was not in the least worried about the decision of the CCJ. If Jagdeo was victorious, I think he could not have won the 2020 election. He just didn’t have the numbers. Can the PPP win without him? In politics, all possibilities are alive. But if the PPP wants to triumph in 2020, it has to undergo a quintessential metamorphosis. And in that configuration, Jagdeo and his shadow have to follow the fate of Macbeth. If not, the entire PPP will end up like Macbeth.
