“The Lone Ranger” starring Lo Lo and directed by Raphael Trotman
I received an email from a well known diaspora Guyanese in which I was asked to publish an opinion as to whether the new government should not take a relook into serious past accusations made against people like Raphael Trotman and others now that they have shown their true colours.
My reaction was; “Why don’t you write a letter to the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News” to which he replied, “They would be afraid of libel from Trotman and not carry it.” I asked him why accusations against Trotman, Nagamootoo, Granger, etc. should be reopened? He said that after the passage of time when you look at what people have turned out to be, then you wonder if we shouldn’t look again at their past. Then with forceful pronouncement, he said; “Freddie, after all you wrote recently about Eusi Kwayana. You don’t think there are secrets in his past?”
It is that statement that caused me to contact some lawyers. I said to them, I plan to write the following words, and queried whether they are libelous. Here they are; “The accusations made against Trotman and others in the past, maybe, should be relooked at.” Sanjeev Datadin, Anil Nandlall and Sase Gunraj told me there is nothing in those words that libels Trotman.
Another prominent lawyer told me the same but said he does not want to be identified but I can transmit his name to my editor. He did say I can go public with the information that he has taken Joe Harmon in front of the Legal Practitioners’ Committee to be disciplined.
I think it is a fair question that needs probing. I have intense curiosity about what David Granger and Joe Harmon knew about the Walter Rodney tragedy. A certain well-known trade unionist repeated in front of me and David Hinds what former army chief, Godwin Mc Pherson (deceased) told him about the Rodney event. I hope David does not deny that Granger and Harmon were very highly placed in the army hierarchy at the time. What about the movement of ballot boxes from the polling stations in the 1973 elections? Was the army high command involved?
Let’s return to Trotman, this time not about the past but the present. Trotman using unambiguous language said that the report of the Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield (Lo Lo), has to be accepted by GECOM and there is no law or constitutional provision that can result in a rejection of his report.
In my column of Wednesday, July 15, 2020 under the title, “The crass ignorance of Raphael Trotman,” I wrote the following; “If the CEO in Guyana can submit a report and the body that administers the election system has to accept it, then we are talking about the most omnipotent person in Guyana. This gentleman then determines all by himself who becomes president.”
I don’t know if the present generation from the working class and the rural peasantry folks are aware of an exclamation we had back in my days as a small boy. I think even the Georgetown middle classes knew it. When you “big up” yourself then you were shamelessly brought back down to earth, we would say, “yuh look like a cent ice.”
Well Raphael Trotman look like a cent ice after the Chief Justice (CJ) ruled on the omnipotence of Lo Lo. She used the word, “Lone Ranger”, meaning he could not pull his gun whenever he wanted to in any circumstances and remain above the law because he is not above the law.
Trotman made him the Lone Ranger. But the Chief Justice made him an ordinary citizen that is accountable to his bosses. The CJ ruled that Lo Lo has bosses whose edicts he has to adhere to. Above I made reference to past accusations against people like Trotman. We must also look at their past education background.
Surely, it has to be an embarrassment to any law professor that one of his past students can proclaim to the world that in Guyana, the law and the constitution give unlimited power to one person to decide who wins the national election and who will be the president.
What goes through the mind of a trained lawyer that would make a statement for the world to see that any number that the CEO presents to Guyana’s election body that organization has to accept it even though it is as stale as cow dung left in the mud for months. Since there is no sun, the dung remains stink and fetid. What was Trotman drinking when he uttered his massive asininity?
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
Bass Reeves. (Credit: Public Domain)