Ass Kissers and Batty Washers!! Rodney turning in his grave!!!
Does the PPP have a monopoly on political nastiness?
I lived under the administration of five PPP presidents beginning with Dr. Cheddi Jagan. Every PPP president was severely chastised by opposition parties, for the most harmless policy to national blunders. This columnist participated consistently in those condemnations. I was in countless picketing activities alongside the leaders of the PNC, AFC and several trade union leaders.
There has to be an answer as to why invisibility has taken over these faces.
Let us start with Tabitha Sarabo-Halley. She represents the WPA in the Cabinet. No other person has put the WPA on the map more than Walter Rodney. To date, no one in the current WPA hierarchy or anyone associated with the WPA has rejected Rodney as the spiritual leader and ideological guide of the WPA. In fact, the WPA’s public relations television programme is named Walter Rodney Groundings. The WPA head office is named Walter Rodney House. Each press conference of the WPA is done so that the cameras can capture the huge image of Rodney in the background.
But with the conspicuous exception of David Hinds, all WPA hierarchical members, including those that belong to an amorphous thing named Overseas Associates of the WPA, are so badly tattered that Rodney’s wife and children should save the name of their husband/father and demand the WPA no longer uses Rodney’s name and image.
Sarabo-Halley was just days into her role as minister when she arrogated to herself semi-fascist power and peremptorily fired three public servants from her ministry. Not only was the act of dismissal a manifestation of political degeneracy, but equally so was the minister’s explanation. She accused them of leaking information. She produced no evidence. She did not seek an inquiry. She did not offer them due process.
Had any PPP minister done that, this scrawny social activist and columnist would have hit the picket line denouncing the PPP minister as semi-fascist. Next to me would have been that very lady, Tabitha Sarabo-Halley, donning a T-shirt with Walter’s visage and holding a placard with the words Walter left in the lexicon of street protest – “people’s power, no dictator.”
Also in the picket line would be the man currently serving as a GECOM commissioner – Desmond Trotman. Also wearing a T-shirt with Walter’s face, Trotman’s placard would have read – “Walter Lives! Power to the People! Well, Walter is still living, but far from us, and he is turning in his grave to see what the WPA has become, and the pretenders that speak in his name.
Trotman voted for the termination of the contract of Deputy Chief Election Officer, Vishnu Persaud, over a candidate that patently lacked the experience and qualifications of Persaud.
To date, no one from the Overseas Associates of the WPA, and the WPA, has said even half of a word about what Sarabo-Halley and Trotman did. Here is something that Walter once said about PNC autocrats during the reign of Burnham; he told a public meeting that he wondered if these autocrats were not afraid that when they speak their hypocritical nonsense, the words do not choke them.
When Sarabo-Halley and Trotman sit down around the table at Rodney House and glance at the large face of Walter staring down at them, are they not afraid that he may rise from his grave and choke them? If the APNU+AFC Coalition wins the next election (God forbid) is Sarabo-Halley going back as a minister? If yes, then the creeping fascistisation I saw under Jagdeo and Ramotar will emerge again. If Sarabo-Halley can arrogantly fire three public servants without any proper investigation, evidence and giving them the right to be heard, then think of what she may do if the APNU+AFC chooses her again.
On a related matter, I voted for Sarabo-Halley’s husband in the 2016 local government election. I wrote positive things in my columns about him at the time. This same guy has publicly invited Guyanese to think about boycotting certain businesses that make up the Private Sector Commission.
The political venalities of the PNC and AFC are tumbling down like water from the Kaieteur Falls but the vociferous voices, the reverberating cries and the screaming vocabularies that dominated Guyana when the PPP was in power are all gone.
I will ask you to say a little prayer for me if you believe in God. When I go out on the picket line to protest the violations of the current government, I know when I look over my shoulder, my soldiers that used to be with me during the hegemony of Jagdeo and Ramotar will not be there.
(The views expressed in this article a
