They can run but can’t hide…

… from Jagdeo

Nagamootoo has the look of a fella who’s been bitch-slapped so many times, he suffers a trauma eve-ry time he hears the name “Jagdeo”. He won’t even talk to his boyhood friend also named “Jagdeo” – who used to catch crabs with him on the Whim foreshore. So when he learnt former President Jagdeo was going to speak AFTER him in the Budget Debate, he nearly suffered a heart attack.

Good thing he’d sneaked some of that good, old Whim bush rum into Parliament, to calm his nerves. But during the recess, he fell on his knees to the APNU Chief Whip, to have Jagdeo moved up the or-der, so that his presentation wouldn’t be skewered as he knew it would be. Ramsammy has just re-vealed how he was “skinned up” by Jagdeo during PPP’s Ex-Co meetings when he attempted to “de-bate” Jagdeo.

“Debate”? For a fella like Nagamootoo, who invariably “wings it” in any discussion, it was like Jagdeo taking candy from a baby! But in APNU trying to hide its 11% man, it’s trampling on a convention that’s been with us since Independence. And with all Westminster-type Parliaments across the world. The convention is that the Opposition Leader’s the penultimate speaker – just before the Finance Minister.

And it makes sense, no? The Opposition Leader gets the opportunity sum up all the arguments his MP’s who preceded him, had made. And to place them within an overarching framework to critique the budget presented by the Government. The Finance Minister then has the final word, to rebut. With the people of Guyana as the sitting jury, it’s as if the two opposing sides in this institutionalized mechanism to get the best “bang for the buck” for Guyana, are allowed to make their “closing argu-ments”.

But this Eyewitness doesn’t think it’s Jordan who’s ducking Jagdeo: Jordan know’s he’s a technocrat and will stick up to the numbers. He’ll leave macro-economic theory on stimulating the economy and suchlike to fellas like Greenidge. The Government must not bow to the pusillanimity of Nagamootoo to refuse to face the man he considers his “nemesis”. They will be doing themselves a favour if they allow him to be a deconstructed. Their 11% man is actually a “hollow man”… full of hot air, that escapes from orifices at both ends of his gastrointestinal tract.

If the APNU/AFC combine is sure of the bona fides of their Budget, then they should have it subjected to the fire of Jagdeo’s critique.

Or else neither history nor the Guyanese people will absolve them.

…their emasculation

Ramjattan finally got the floor to explain why he was fiddling with 2: am curfews while Guyana was burning from a raging crime explosion under his watch. But even before getting to his excuses, even the Muckraker had to point out that his APNU mentors made him address the “racism” issue – which they’d avoided like the plague. Ramjattan, the 11% man’s Berbice sidekick, had to justify his VP title.

He’d put his foot in his mouth when he connected the burgeoning crime rate with the firing of 1800 Amerindian CSO’s. The racist implications were too much for the Opposition. What do Amerindians from the hinterland have to do with armed robberies on the Coast? But the PPP’s demand for an apol-ogy was denied by the Speaker.

One wonders what would’ve happened if a PPP member had claimed that the crime upsurge had coin-cided with Granger’s letting loose “60 convicted criminals” at his accession to the Presidency?

Banned from Parliament?

…Ramjattan’s shame

Ramjattan was obviously so ashamed to be the token “racism” spokesman that he flubbed his lines. Looking at the PPP, he begun: “It was not ethnic cleansing, you guys were doing some…” But before he could complete his sentence, Greenidge shouted “you were using tax dollars to pay people to do PPP work.”

The mouth is muzzled….