Old men’s ramblings

Naga’s folly
Nagamootoo should really stop embarrassing himself. It’s pathetic. He wrote a confused letter to the press trying to defend the indefensible – the gagging of Minister Rohee by Speaker Trotman. He should’ve kept his mouth shut (or his fingers free): he wouldn’t have revealed his abysmal shallowness.
He began with a pitiable attempt at wit. The PPP, he claimed, “is playing a game of ‘Rohee Roulette’ with the opposition’s no-confidence motion as the single bullet in the chamber to shatter … our fledging parliamentary democracy”. Let us remind Nagamootoo that in Russian Roulette to which he alludes, the person puts the gun to their own head to end their miserable existence.  This is what the opposition has done with the ‘no-confidence motion’!
Nagamootoo then claimed when the ‘gag motion’ was introduced by Granger, he advised, “we should not allow Parliament to die over one man”. So in the legislature which creates all our laws, we must allow the opposition to break the law just because it affects “only” one man? This is not just callous and expedient; it is the ultimate subversion of the rule of law.
Let us remind Nagamootoo also that this was the appeasement policy of the disgraced PM of Britain when he allowed Hitler to annex Austria. It was only “one small country”, he advised. But the emboldened Hitler then attempted the takeover of all Europe. Only WWII stopped him. Guyana must draw the line now at the new ‘Hitlerite bullyism’ by the opposition.
Seemingly without any shame, Nagamootoo commended the Chairman of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce for pointing out the effect of ‘political instability’ on “investment and divestment”. Has he repressed the role he and Ramjattan played in triggering the present round of ‘political instability’ by undercutting APNU’s negotiated agreement on the Linden electricity tariff equalisation? Or is he just being his usual mendacious self?
The Granger gag motion, Nagamootoo next claimed, was “marred by incessant howling and hissing from the government benches”! Talk about taking your doo-doo and daubing it on your opponents’ behinds.  We know he couldn’t look at his own face, but did he get a chance to glance at his Leader Ramjattan’s face during the farce? The picture in the papers with Ramjattan’s contorted, hate-filled visage will be used for years to frighten errant children!
But the conclusion on Ramjattan isn’t just our opinion. Did he hear Trotman upbraid Ramjattan for screaming “we gon knock them off (the PPP MPs) one by one”? Let me remind the evidently amnesiac Nagamootoo that Trotman chastised Ramjattan for reducing Parliament to a ‘pappy show’.
Nagamootoo, we know, went to law school in his dotage. So we wish he wouldn’t further humiliate himself by taking on his seniors like AG Nandlall. We remind him of the local aphorism on “lil rum bottles”: they should know their place is not with big rum bottles. The neophyte lawyer claimed that since the opposition can pass a no-confidence motion against the entire government – and bring them down (since new elections have to be called), he doesn’t see why passing a no-confidence motion against one member – Rohee – shouldn’t “knock him off”.
Did he fall asleep in law school when the professor was teaching “logical fallacies”? Let’s remind the wannabe lawyer about “the logical fallacy of division”. Not because something is true for the whole means that it is true for every part. Are there legal refresher classes available?
The Buxton sage
Eusi Kwayana seems to believe that Guyana is no country for old men – he decamped Buxton and Guyana after the 2001 assault on the PPP government by gunmen based in Buxton. Painting the opposition as purer than Caesar’s wife, he wrote that, without precedent, the PPP should have brought the opposition into the Cabinet. What about the opposition traducing PPP’s 20-year precedent for granting the deputy speaker post to the opposition?