Samaroo/Ramson – a toxic combination
Shawn Samaroo is hard to take at the best of times with his adjective laden “dark and sinister” coverage of the Rodney Commission of Inquiry for which he has the book and movie rights. (Yes it’s going to be a Hollywood blockbuster!) However put Charles Ramson Sr on the stand and it is a toxic combination of verbosity and pomposity.
We have been deliberately ignoring the COI despite it being presided over by – as Samaroo puts it – “outstanding legal luminaries from across the Caribbean”. He recalls once again that it was convened “in the face of vociferous, irrational and disquieting disapproval from the PNC and its disgruntled sympathisers.”
Sadly It has devolved from potentially a legitimate inquiry into the death of Walter Rodney into a theatre for scoring cheap political history points. But the bejewelled Ramson is always good for the entertainment factor even though his testimony was almost completely about The Charles Ramson story. So the young Ramson faced “intimidation, harassment, threats and bullying from the Police Force even as he was in “a paradox of contradictions,” with political parties labelling him partisan and biased.”
Samaroo transcribes faithfully, adding some hard core boot licking re the “experienced, accomplished and highly regarded former Attorney General”.
Among his anecdotes is a protest incident where he was ordered to leave by the police, Ramson recalled, “I refused and one of them, in full view of Bentick, lashed and poked me in my midriff area with a baton. They said or did nothing to (now Chief Justice) Chang! We re-entered my car for fear of my life and drove away.”
Samaroo concludes with an adjectival flourish “… the former Attorney General added a dimension to the piling up of evidence against the PNC Government’s draconian, dictatorial, repressive, paranoid rule of Guyana.”
Now everyone go lie down in a dark room for a few hours.