And many more here on GNI are no better
Is it true that Moses Nagamootoo is ill?
Kaieteur News – The GECOM statements of poll for the 2015 elections showed the rejection of the village for Whim for Nagamootoo where he came from. It was an ignominious rejection. Then one year after came another devastating blow. Nagamootoo again was repudiated by Whim in the 2016 local government election (LGE) results.
It was one humiliating result after another. In the 2018 LGE, the knife was twisted in with more excruciating force; Nagamotoo’s sister suffered a most horrifying loss. Then came the denouement on March 3. The SOPs for the 2020 election that I saw in the studio of Kaieteur Radio told me that Nagamootoo was gone forever. The APNU+AFC did not capture even five percent of the votes in Whim where the sitting PM is from.
After Nagamootoo became Prime Minister in 2015, the village of Whim was finished with him. They felt that he was a decorative prime minister. This attitude of Nagamootoo’s home town put a tremendous mental burden on him. You have to be embarrassed as prime minister when you face the population with two realities printed on your shirt sleeve. You have no real authority to effect far reaching changes as the second most constitutionally powerful person on the land.
Secondly, your home town, including Nagamootoo’s own relatives, saw him as a washed up mandarin who was not worthy of their village. Nagamootoo was never a happy man. He carried a huge guilt complex with him. Eventually the heart gave way in early 2019 and he spent almost half a year recovering after triple by-pass in the US. When he returned to Guyana, Nagamootoo discovered that the AFC was also finished with him.
The AFC wanted Ramjattan to replace him as PM candidate for the 2020 election. Since 2015 Nagamootoo lived his life with the shadows of humiliation following him. He refused to concede the PM slot and this brought down a ton of bricks on him from the AFC. At the AFC’s congress in June in Vryheid’s Lust in 2019, only one voice was heard in the room giving support to his candidacy – an AFC youth, Cynthia Rutherford, who was on his staff. Nagamootoo thought that Trotman would have continued his support for his PM candidacy which he, Trotman announced in February 2019. At the Vryheid’s Lust congress, Trotman said not a word and Nagamootoo mentally collapsed after that. He sought survival through the PNC. He donned the colours of the PNC on a platform in Bartica at a party rally that merged into a Cabinet retreat in June 2019. He had signaled his intention as to which party he stood with and it was not the AFC. At that meeting, Joe Harmon endorsed Nagamootoo for the PM slot referring to him as royalty. But the royalty melted like butter against the sun. The AFC threatened the PNC that if it does not accept Ramjattan as the PM candidate, the APNU+AFC partnership would be dissolved.
Despite relentless lobbying to get the PNC to officially declare him as the PM candidate, the PNC proposed a compromise. It will not endorse him but it will avoid at all times announcing Ramjattan as the PM candidate. This did not go down well with the man from Whim. Nagamootoo collapsed a second time.
At the Bartica rally, he and Winston Jordan were inciting the crowd. Jordan blurted out, “war break”. Nagamootoo shouted to the crowd that the youths will rebel if house to house registration was stopped. Nagamootoo suffered a third mental collapse when the APNU+AFC held a public meeting in July 2019 in Whim to address the youths. Nagamootoo almost lost his life when hostile crowds moved menacingly in front of him and the police whisked him away. It was a stupid strategy in that none of the speakers were from the AFC but all from the PNC with Nagamootoo wearing the PNC colours.
Since August 2 when the PPP was declared the election winner, Nagamootoo has not been seen. I have asked dozens of persons close to him including former security personnel and they all told me they have not seen him since August 2. A top insider told me that Nagamootoo collapsed for the fourth time after he read it in the news that Granger had conceded.
When Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, called Granger on July 31, 2020 and warned him about legal consequences in international law for remaining illegally in power, Granger conceded and informed the PNC hierarchy. Nagamootoo was not contacted and knew the next day like the rest of the nation. Yesterday, a relative of Nagamootoo told me to pray for him. I am not religious but deep down in my heart I hope he recovers fully.
