President Jagdeo said it, now President Ramotar repeats it

In my column of August 29, last, captioned, “Politics that just don’t make sense at all,” I referred to a statement made by former President Jagdeo at the International Convention Centre in which he cited the names of Christopher Ram, Ramon Gaskin and Professor Clive Thomas as the persons who “killed” (Jagdeo’s word) the Amaila Falls hydro power project.
In that article I wrote the following; “If Mr. Jagdeo can publicly admit that a group of academics derailed his legacy then surely it is an admission that the Government has detractors that are strategically placed. It is an admission that there are poles of power in Guyana that the ruling party cannot conquer, and those poles are formidable voices.
“It follows then that the most logical thing to do is to initiate a process of dialogue. If you refuse to talk, and according to Mr. Jagdeo, the country loses out, then such politics makes no sense at all. You are openly confessing to the nation that there are groups in Guyana that can intensively hurt major policies that are important to the Government and the country. Then any student around the world that heard those words of Mr. Jagdeo in reference to the opposition, “they kill hydro,” would say; “then, why don’t they talk?” This is not only logical but commonsensical.”
In yesterday’s Stabroek News, there is the bold headline on page 16, “Politics Still Holding Back UG –Ramotar.” Obviously, Mr. Ramotar is referring to the opposition. There can be no other meaning. In the same vein as in the case of the Jagdeo-influenced comment above, any student around the world will ask the same question: “Why then don’t they talk?”
Mr. Ramotar made his pronouncement while addressing the first in a series of symposia celebrating fifty years of UG’s existence. What was interesting to note in the context of Ramotar’s exclamation is that three persons from the PPP were on the panel and there was no representative from the opposition or the unions.
It was intriguing to note that Mr. Navin Chandarpal was a panelist but I did not read in what context he appeared. Incidentally, the Opposition Leader is a graduate from UG with the President’s Medal. Now this set up seems to me to be the usual ghost of political domination that has so killed off the credibility of UG. But let us get back to Mr. Ramotar’s claim of politics holding back UG.
The record shows that the PPP, Mr. Ramotar’s party, has been in power for twenty-one years and for the past fifteen years has had four PPP parliamentarians and seven card-bearing members of the party (including the MPs) on the UG Council. Surely if politics is holding back UG then where is the source of this politics? It cannot be from the opposition when the Council is stacked with PPP members and the Council decides everything at UG.
Let us assume that the source of the politics is from the opposition, then, the Jagdeo hydropower scream is relevant. If for twenty-one years, the ruling PPP has dominated Guyana and UG yet (as in Mr. Jagdeo’s hydropower scenario), the opposition can hold back UG, then surely as the argument as contained in the quote above is relevant, that is, there are poles of formidable power that the Government has no control over and for the sake of Guyana’s future, the Government should engage them. Isn’t this commonsense? If they can kill one of Mr. Jagdeo’s legacies, if they can weaken UG, then we have two strong poles of power and either they talk or we die as a country.
The analysis tells another story. In both cases (Jagdeo’s scream about his hydropower death and Ramotar’s intonation about UG), the situation is billions of miles away from what Jagdeo and Ramotar are crying about. The Amaila deal fell through because the investors Sithe Global told the Government that it will not proceed because as the opposition is in disagreement then if the opposition gets into power it may scuttle the Sithe Global investment.
In UG’s case, Ramotar is far less than straightforward. The politics that is holding back UG in the view of a majority of Guyanese is governmental domination. Hours after Mr. Ramotar made his statement on Tuesday afternoon, I addressed the students in communications on the topic of politics and the media. I could not believe the dilapidated interior of the building. It was a tragic sight. Not even in the poorest school in any CARICOM state would an education building look so run down.