Jagan, D’Aguiar, Tony Vieira and bitter/sweet ironies
Those not familiar with this angle should know that Mr. Nascimento was an avowed anti-communist crusader against the Marxist regime of Dr. Jagan in the first half of the sixties.
I hope Mr. Nascimento does not take this the wrong way. There is now an ongoing revisionist journey in Guyanese history that would release both Mr. Nascimento and Mr. Peter D’Aguiar from the infamy that PPP propagandists once assigned them.
No historian who is worth his/her salt believes that the PPP Government in the sixties was an innocent administration that the United Force of Nascimento and D’Aguiar attacked for selfish reasons. Mr. Nascimento ought to write an account of that period. There is a young generation in Guyana that is no longer fooled by the so-called innocence of the PPP and its leaders. It is such a pity if Mr. Nascimento leaves his record unpublished. I suspect he may not want to go that route once the PPP is in power, but should they lose the 2011 election (I believe they will), he should start writing.
I know the PPP activist who tried to kill Mr. Nascimento’s friend, the Argosy editor, Peter Taylor on April 3, 1964.
The sweetest irony in Guyanese history involved the Government of the USSR and Mr. Peter D’Aguair. D’Aguiar’s objective was to prevent communist rule in British Guiana. Cheddi Jagan’s dream was to see British Guiana and the world fall to the feet of the USSR. The two men fought a violent ideological war.
Then the communist government of the USSR decided to open an embassy in Independent Guyana. And guess whose property they bought to house the diplomatic complex? D’Aguair’s mansion on Public Road, Kitty. Jagan looked like a fool, but he didn’t care because he knew the East Indians would turn a blind eye to all his political asininities.
We come now to Tony Vieira. He sold Channel 28 to a business man whom the President publicly stated is his very close friend, Dr. Bobby Ramroop, owner of the Guyana Times. How funny! This same Vieira spent 10 years carping about the PPP Government and President Jagdeo, but chose to put the Evening News in the hands of a known government supporter.
To say that Dr. Ramroop is a Government supporter is to put it mildly. The facts show that the concessions Dr. Ramroop’s company, Queens Atlantic got, were not backed by law until the President, on realising the mistake, resorted to Parliament.
So Mr. Vieira is gone. Good riddance! He was a sought after citizen, first by the AFC, then the PNC because of the Evening News. One doubts very much his political value will remain. Mr. Vieira was a pretender to intellectual property. His penchant was to cuss down when he was intellectually challenged. Adam Harris, Glenn Lall, Yesu Persaud and many prominent citizens were all attacked without even the resort to one intellectual sentence. When it came to me, Mr. Vieira claimed to be the embodiment of aesthetics. During his nightly interruption of the news to insert his intellectual pretence, he once claimed to have married one of the most beautiful women in Guyana. To this aesthetic boast, he let his viewers know that Freddie Kissoon is an ugly East Indian.
Wow! I didn’t sleep for years thinking of how I would like to be handsome like Tony Vieira. I missed out on not collecting a few millions from him because in many of his attacks on me, he was openly libelous. But let him step out again and this time he will get court documents from me.
There is a rumour going around that he will continue to do commentary on the Evening News and write a column for the Guyana Times. Now that will be hilarious – from Jagdeo-bashing to Jagdeo hugging. But Vieira is missing something. Like the Mirror newspaper, the Guyana Times is given away.
At the last car racing event, people didn’t even bother to collect it. And who is going to look at a pro-Government Evening News?