The Mahatma Gandhi once said something to the effect that decency is not merely an appeal to the court of justice, but an appeal to the court of conscience. He also said that a man can change, and may even choose other friends and colleagues, as long as he steadfastly refuses to compromise his principles. There was a picture in the newspapers over this past weekend, showing Moses Nagamootoo standing next to David Granger at a ceremony paying homage to Forbes Burnham. It was a sad and vexing spectacle of a man totally lacking conscience, absolutely compromising his principles and selling his soul to the highest bidder just for the taste of power.
Following Cheddi Jagan’s death in 1997, Nagamootoo was fond of raising his cup in salute to Cheddi and proclaiming: “This One is for You, Pa”. But, in many ways, every day in the last several years he has betrayed the man he once called pa, whom he once revered as his hero and as the undisputed Father of the Nation. The image of Nagamootoo bowing in reverence, honouring and paying homage to Burnham, stands as the perfect picture of betrayal, an abomination.
That David Granger was paying tribute to Forbes Burnham — his life-long hero, a man Granger has always embraced as the Father of the Nation — seems fit and proper. Granger, now the Leader of the People’s National Congress, was leading the supporters of the PNC in their annual pilgrimage to honour their founder-leader. They stood on solid ground, espousing their politics and their principles. I defiantly reject their politics and principles, but I do not deny them their right to their beliefs. That politics and those principles by which they have lived are abhorrent to me, but there was nothing wrong or repugnant about what Granger and the supporters of the PNC did last weekend, and for 32 years now.
Yet, the obscene picture of Nagamootoo standing there in reverence of Burnham represents a visual portrayal for all Guyanese and for the world to witness Nagamootoo now proclaiming Burnham as his hero, the Father of the Nation, and a disciple of freedom and democracy.
It is a shocking transformation, because, between 1968 and 2011, a period spanning 43 years — from his teenage years to those of a pensioner — Nagamootoo wrote and spoke passionately of Burnham as a brutal dictator; an “abomination”; a man who led Guyana to greater and more profound poverty; left Guyana one of the most indebted nations on Earth; brutally rigged elections; responsible for the death of the Ballot Box Martyrs; under whose rule a centrally directed group of thugs and assassins killed people like Walter Rodney, Father Darke, and many others.
His speeches and conversations, and his writings, represent a rich catalogue of the brutal and odious rule of Burnham.
Does he possess the courage to look people in the eye and say that all those things he wrote about the dictator; all those claims he made of being harassed, intimidated, wrongly jailed, kidnapped, beaten to a pulp — things forever enshrined in the Hansards of Parliament, in Mirror and in the Thunder under his name — were lies and fictions of his imagination?
But the sad tale of the picture of Nagamootoo standing next to Granger in total subservience to Burnham’s memory is also a stark repudiation of Cheddi Jagan. In one cruel picture, he transformed Cheddi Jagan from being his pa and his hero and the real Father of the Nation into an ogre, the man who must have brainwashed him, misinformed him, and made him speak and write of Burnham in such ugly ways between 1968 and 2015.
During the 2015 election campaign, Nagamootoo claimed in front of Jagan’s loyal supporters that he was still a Jaganite. It was a cruel lie. One cannot embrace Jagan while in reverence of Burnham. They stood poles apart for different things. Jagan wanted freedom for his people, Burnham wanted power.
Now that he has repudiated Jagan, will Nagamootoo now go to Berbice — go to the belly of Jagan’s supporters — and tell them why he now is salivating in the bosom of Burnham? Will he go and now tell his comrades for more than forty years that Jagan was wrong about Burnham, and that Jagan is not the Father of the Nation? Will he apologize to all the PNC supporters and tell them Burnham was never a dictator, and that he, Nagamootoo, was an inveterate liar for more than forty years?
