The inscrutable language of Raphael Trotman
If asked what I think of the politics of Raphael Trotman, I would say that he has ended his political career. The AFC will soon have a new leader and my prediction is that the AFC will front a Nagamootoo/Hughes ticket for the next election with a future Hughes leadership of the AFC. For all extent and purpose, Trotman’s grassroots and public politics with the AFC is over.
That of course was not the way it evolved. Trotman himself chose it. At an internal meeting of closely knit AFC cadres he told them that he will now have to be a neutral actor by virtue of being the Speaker of Parliament.
You can twist that statement in a million ways; it is a judgement by Trotman that he can no longer be a politicized citizen active in opposition politics in the public realm.
Indeed, Trotman has not visited the struggles of the AFC since the last elections. He has not been on the speakers’ roster of the AFC since the 2011 elections. He has not participated in any of the sporadic protests that broke out on the sugar estates and in Cane Grove and Glasgow where other issues caused citizens to vent their frustration.
The rest of the AFC’s top dogs have turned up in these places. I can speak with 100 percent accuracy on Trotman’s invisibility because I was there in all these situations. I was told last week that he turned up at the opening of the AFC’s office at Enmore.
Let us suppose there is a snap election. It will not be called this year for sure. If it does happen next year, one wonders what asset Trotman will become to the AFC because the longer you stay away from the public activities of an electoral party the quicker is the loss of your electoral appeal. But more than that, if there is a snap election, will Trotman help the cause of the AFC given what is known of his postures in the Parliament?
Here are the words of Raphael Trotman as reported in demerarawaves.com last week. As an anti-government activist, and let me say that I used that label to describe myself consciously and willingly because I am opposed to dictatorship and the PPP Government is a dictatorship (no space here to delineate the typologies of authoritarian systems), I cannot accept these utterances by Mr. Trotman or any leader of the AFC and APNU. To use strong language, I think if Trotman said what demerarawaves.com cited as making then he is talking nonsense.
Trotman is alleged to have said; “Despite the rhetoric and what’s happening in the public domain there are good thoughts and views being expressed… we are not getting a sense that government is withdrawing necessarily… I think there is public posture and then there is private posture which the two are not necessarily the same and I would like to say that there are encouraging signs that we are making progress.”
I want to use direct and blunt descriptions in analyzing these words of Trotman but I will settle for what he told Guyanese on the campaign trail. I was with him in Region Ten during the election campaign. He promised the people there an end to NCN monopoly. He failed to deliver. Then, to add insult to injury he tells us that the government is willing to stay in talks with the opposition.
So barefaced is Trotman that he shows contempt for the Guyanese people by saying that there are good thoughts and views being shown.
The people of Guyana whom Trotman begged for their votes don’t want to hear good thoughts and views by any politician. They want the people with power to stop oppressing them. They want good governance. They want the President and his Government to explain why only certain persons got radio license; an end to NCN monopoly; the subsidy to Critchlow Labour College restored; an end to PPP domination of UG; investigation into monstrous corruption.
As for me, I would like to see Trotman ask his friends in the PPP why my UG contract was terminated with immediate effect on January 18 and not August 31 which was when it was to end.
Trotman ought to know that the PPP Government is going to dialogue with the combined opposition from now to eternity and will happy to do. This is the PPP will do. What it will not do is deliver. Unless it has delivered to Trotman it surely hasn’t done so to the Guyanese people. It is seven months since the last election in 2011.
