Harris’s harvest, Hamilton’s hambroline, history’s heaven
OCTOBER 6, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, FREDDIE KISSOON

Next to Heaven, the most reassuring place is history. History tells us what we didn’t know. History opens our eyes. And history makes liars of those who try to fool us. Shall we look at history, Adam Harris, Joseph Hamilton, the former PNC leader now turned PPPite, then speak to the residents of Albion in Berbice and nearby districts? Yes we should!
For the second time in less than a year in addresses to Berbice audience, President Jagdeo, attempting to paint the Kaieteur News as an opposition newspaper affiliated to the PNC, told his listeners that the paper’s editor, Adam Harris, is a man who worked for the PNC Government. The latest of such an announcement was at the Albion election rally of the PPP last Sunday.
The ironic moments in the life of the present government are so oceanic or mountainous or simply countless that it is useless trying to measure which one is more shocking than the others. Just before President Jagdeo told the gathering at Albion that Adam Harris used to work for the PNC Government, Mr. Joseph Hamilton came up the platform and was introduced as a PNC convert to the PPP cause. Can you get a more blatant irony than this? The listeners are told to be suspicious of the Kaieteur News because Adam Harris edits it and he was once a part of the PNC Government. Joseph Hamilton worked for the PNC Government and remained with the PNC long after it lost power in 1992.
The PPP leaders were lucky that no drunken fool didn’t walk up on stage and reminded them that Mr. Hamilton was once part of the PNC.
Let us peep inside history’s heaven to see how beautiful are the flows of history. Mr. Donald Ramotar once pointedly asked me in a letter in this newspaper what did I mean by the words, “the poetic essence of history.” I didn’t reply but I will tell him in person when I visit one of the PPP meetings in South Georgetown where I have my roots.
So what is inside of history that is so instructive that PPP supporters and the goodly folks of Albion can be educated about the contents of past epochs in this country?
Kwame McCoy once worked with the PNC Government in a close capacity. He functioned in the office of the Prime Minister. When the PNC lost power in 1992, Mr. Mc Coy worked with Mayor Hamilton Green. Shall we remind Berbicians that the said gentleman is a powerful figure in the Office of the President working closely with the very man who reminded us last Sunday that Adam Harris was once a functionary with the PNC regime?
Mr. Odinga Lumumba and I have a little score to settle. I will not go into details. But when it comes to my family, I see red. When my wife occupied the post of a project officer in Guyana Office for Manufacturing and Industrial Development Agency (GUYMIDA) in the PNC presidency of Desmond Hoyte, Mr. Lumumba, a long-standing PNC official then, made a remark to her about her husband. Maybe when I speak on the platform of one or all of the opposition parties, I will describe what happened.
The entire Guyana knows that Mr. Lumumba was an employee under both Burnham and Hoyte. Mr. Lumumba is an advisor to the man who told us last Sunday that Adam Harris was once a PNC Government employee.
This writer saw Sir Shridath Ramphal on television delivering a panegyric on President Jagdeo in honour of the Day of Appreciation. The goodly knighted gentleman remains an admirer of Forbes Burnham and was one of President Burnham’s closest advisors. Under President Jagdeo, there was a diplomat who served under the presidencies of both Hoyte and Burnham. His name is Rudy Insanally. He was named Foreign Minister by President Jagdeo.
Shall we go on about the harvest years of Adam Harris? And return to Hamilton’s hambroline? Or continue to look inside history’s heaven?
Let’s recount the past before we conclude. Justice Prem Persaud was made a magistrate and judge under the PNC Government. Khurshid Sattaur was deputy to Edgar Heyligar at the tax department. But wait! Here is a salacious part. Do you know the owner of a certain television station who is extremely close to the President was once on a committee to re-elect Mr. Desmond Hoyte in the 1992 elections?
Finally, when Manzoor Nadir was in opposition to President Jagdeo, he threatened to write the US Government about Guyana’s trade with Cuba. Some people are too foolish to remember the past.