Ramjattan has lost his mind

Dear Editor,
Every human being has some moral compass and decency. Whatever moral authority and decency Khemraj Ramjattan might have possessed, he has totally lost today. His arrogant boasting, taking responsibility for the closure of sugar estates, for putting people out of jobs – the very people who helped him become a Minister and rise to the position of a Vice-President – prove he has totally lost his mind, has no moral authority and any decency left in him. The sad caricature of Ramjattan today – despised by the vast majority of Guyanese, including in his own home region, some of whom once genuinely admired and treated him as a hero – is utterly humiliating. He is now a traitor who betrayed decent people, a liar who “sings for his supper”, a consummate soup-drinker. Ramjattan is a despised puppet, dangling on a string. His parents had higher hopes for him.
Last week, Ramjattan boasted he, Moses Nagamootoo and their AFC colleagues did not just “went along” with APNU to close sugar estates, they actually advocated for the closure. He went out of his way to take credit for the closure of the estates, taking credit for terminating the employment of more than 7000 workers, directly jeopardising the livelihood of more than 60,000 persons, including children, women and the elderly, and indirectly jeopardising the livelihood of tens of thousands more. After the closure, the unemployed sugar workers had to fight for their severance and many of them had to approach the courts to force APNU/AFC to pay the legally-required severance. This is the burgeoning insanity, the steaming garbage this arrogant, blithering idiot is taking credit for. It is disgraceful to see him singing for his supper, all because he wants power and salivating at the prospects of being Prime Minister, zero chance it may be.
It is baffling, outrageous, unfathomable, just plain bizarre that Ramjattan is owning and boasting of the most potent, painful mistakes APNU/AFC made since May 2015, one that APNU/AFC itself is trying to hide from, one that has led to the most humiliating defeat any Government can experience, more than two-thirds rejection in Two Local Government Elections and the loss of a No-Confidence Motion. Mark my word, APNU (PNC) itself will distant themselves from the closure of the estates and the termination of employment for more than 7000 people, insisting in the upcoming election campaign that they merely “went along” with the AFC.
Not only did they close four estates, but APNU/AFC is doing everything, including pushing incompetence and mismanagement of the remaining three sugar estates, everything to demoralise the remaining sugar workers and create the excuse for the entire closure of sugar in Guyana. Ramjattan and none of his colleagues can now assure anyone the rest of sugar will not close under APNU/AFC, should they still be there in 2020. Who will believe the same people who told them during the 2015 elections campaign that no estate will be closed and every worker will receive a 20 per cent wage increase, and, immediately after closing four estates, terminated more than 7000 jobs, and froze all sugar workers’ wages that they will not proceed to close the whole industry? I said before the 2015 elections that one of the major goals of APNU/AFC was to close sugar estates and eventually sugar. They railed that I was fear-mongering. But, sadly, my prediction came through. Now I am again predicting, should APNU/AFC stay in Government, the other estates will also be closed, with Uitvlugt being next, followed by Blairmont and eventually Albion.
Ramjattan, as he bloviates nonsense, refuses to talk about the $30 billion loan they took on the books of GuySuCo. He refuses to talk about the more than $1 billion in interest already paid. He refuses to say who has the money, how it was spent. NICIL insists it has given GuySuCo more than $17 billion of the money already and that GuySuCo cannot tell them what they did with the money. GuySuCo denies this assertion, but Ramjattan is boasting he personally, together with his AFC colleagues, including Moses Nagamootoo, are the ones calling the shots.
As families sink deeper into poverty, as local small family businesses like the grocery shops struggle for survival, as local seamstress and tailors barely survive, as local vendors find it hard to make ends meet, this blithering, arrogant man feels he needs to boast and take responsibility for the suffering foisted on innocent people. Why? Because he wants to be Prime Minister, he wants to continue to live the “good life” on the backs of poor people, he wants to suck the blood out of the very people he once fooled into voting for him. Now it is election time, he will make more promises to them, he will brazenly lie full-throated, as he sings for his supper. If ever there was a poster child for a soup drinker, Ramjattan has laid claim to being the champion soup-drinker poster child. Meanwhile, since the disgraceful admission that AFC played the pivotal role in estate closing, Nagamootoo has gone silent. Is he also willing to publicly boast he too is responsible, as Ramjattan confessed?

Sincerely,
Dr Leslie Ramsammy