Your Eyewitness had wondered (idly!) as to what became of Nagamootoo after the APNU/AFC coalition demitted office in 2020 – kicking and screaming – five months after the elections were held. As is usual in our dear Mudland, rumours abounded: he was too embarrassed to show his face; he was in the States being treated for some illness; he was having withdrawal symptoms from having his outriders withdrawn when he moved around… and so on!!
Well, we’ve finally been taken off our tenterhooks by the Naga-man himself. Seems he’d scurried off to the land of the Great Satan where he plunged into such a veritable orgy of writing, even his wife had to make appointments to see him!! Wasn’t this tantamount to “spousal abuse”, wondered your Eyewitness while he digested this titbit? So what was it he was writing that caused him to neglect his marital obligations? Seems it was a book which he gave the fantastically original title – “Dear Land of Guyana”!! Someone should expand on this theme and make it our National Anthem!!
But he expanded on the book’s title that it was about his “Quest for national unity”!! Ahhh…what a guy!! Nary a thought about his ambitions – which everyone in his 50-year political career describes as “overweening!! Remember his insistence that Cheddi promised to make him his “successor” while campaigning in the Rupununi? No one else on the stage heard this but Naga threw quite some tantrums when he was overlooked after the old man passed away.
But all of that is history… Guyanese wanted to find out more about why he allowed Granger to walk all over him like a doormat when the PM-on-steroids he was promised on a WRITTEN agreement – the Cummingsburg Accord – was never delivered!! As his old comrade from his PPP days – and PPP’s presidential candidate Ramotar predicted – all he got was “Larwah”!! He meekly accepted Granger’s excuse that the constitution “didn’t permit making him chair cabinet meetings”!! But not a murmur!! But what folks most wanted to know about was why he went along with the blatant PNC elections-rigging with the Mingo spreadsheets and soiled bedsheet – a practice he’d condemned for decades while in the PPP!! Sadly, not a murmur!!
What he did reveal was his hurt feelings when on same the day when Pres Ali was finally sworn in, all his state vehicles – presumably with their outriders! – were removed!! Not a word about the FIVE MONTHS it took for him and Granger to try every trick in the book – and then some!! – to cling on to power!! Maybe he could’ve explained why he went along with questioning whether 33 was the majority of 65??
Anyhow, your Eyewitness is happy Naga Man is alive and writing.
…the Rwandan genocide
Rwanda should be an object lesson for Guyana on the dangers of ethnic and political conflict. Declared a colony of Belgium after Germany was defeated in WWI – illustrating the arbitrariness of colonial rule – it was separated from Burundi which had the same Tutsi and Hutu peoples. They were all of the same race but different tribally and ethnically. The tensions between the two tribes exploded after independence in 1962 and in the following decades violence broke out.
In the eighties, the ruling Hutu’s preemptively launched attacks on the Tutsis and in 1994 eventually massacred over a MILLION of them – even as the west looked on without intervening.
Tutsi rebels under President Kagame attacked from neighbouring Congo and took over the government – which they’ve retained to date. Kagame has banned ethnic mobilisation for political office and using ethnic symbols. He’s been accused of being “authoritarian” and anti-democratic – but has not only maintained stability but brought prosperity to Rwanda!!
Possibly a lesson for us?
…teachers bargaining?
The GTU president’s predicting another teachers’ strike. Forced by the court into face-to-face meetings with the Min of Ed, they can’t prove that 2019-2023 wage increases were on the table – but want it addressed!!
Overreach or overkill??
