Part 2: Under Conversation Tree with Ralph and Moses

READING Ralph Ramkarran’s April 30, 2022 ‘Conversation Tree’ article entitled ‘Where is Moses Nagamootoo?’ about his and our old friend Moses Nagamootoo, coming as it did just four days before World Press Freedom Day, sent me down memory lane when we were all friends and writers, conversing in the same language under any tree.

Let me say, up-front, that I’ve always been closer to Moses than Ralph.

That said, it’s clear from his chronicled thoughts that Ralph has ‘feelings’ about the Moses of the post-Cheddi Jagan era, but also respects the fact that none should erase our mutual friend’s historical contributions to the struggle for Press Freedom in Guyana.

Moses had much to do with my six years of service to Guyana through State and party media between 1993 and 1999, when I served as Chairman of the Board of GTV (now NCN), a Director at GBC Radio and Editor of The Mirror, writing articles and opinions daily and presenting nightly such programmes (on then the nation’s only radio station) like ‘Action Line’ and ‘Issues in the News’ on GBC, as well as current affairs/opinions on GTV.

Back then, while Information Minister Nagamootoo was pursuing a law degree at the University of the West Indies (The UWI) in Trinidad & Tobago, I served with Mrs Janet Jagan as Editor-in-Chief and Ralph was Speaker of the National Assembly.

Ralph’s article did put a few historical incidents into better perspective for me, including the funny yet serious true story of how and why they fell-out over the politics of leadership and succession and reconnected over two headache tablets, caused by what Ralph describes as Moses’ “peculiar affinity” and “insatiable gnawing for tablets of any kind…”

He recalled Moses’ contributions to, and sufferance from, his commitment to truthful reporting, as in the case of being saddled with the heaviest fine of $25,000 (in those days) for reporting that President Forbes Burnham’s electric fence had electrocuted a cow; and his fearless reporting too, on the Jim Jones mass-murder at Mabaruma that put Guyana in the world news for all the wrong reasons.

I moved to Guyana with my family in 1993 and Moses would also later become Godfather to my Guyana-born son Amani and Best Man at my 1996 wedding at the Brickdam Cathedral.

But, from the day Cheddi Jagan was cremated at Babu John cemetery in Berbice, I knew that Moses saw himself as deserving of nomination for succession as the next PPP leader and presidential candidate.

One of his claims to qualify over all others was his oft-repeated mantra that after Cheddi and Janet Jagan, Dr Roger Luncheon was the only candidate who ever scored more votes than him in elections to the Executive Committee at successive PPP Congresses.

As it turned out, Mrs Jagan reluctantly accepted the post, if only to maintain party unity around one presidential candidate.

The opposition People’s National Congress (PNC) launched a scorched-earth campaign after losing the 1997 elections to her, their opposition based mainly on the fact that she was “not born in Guyana” – and to a larger (but less admissible extent) because she was ‘White’, never mind that the Chicago-born nurse had married Dr Cheddi Jagan, moved to Guyana before 1946, helped form the PPP (that PNC Founder Leader Forbes Burnham was Chairman of) and was the longest-serving elected member of the National Assembly after her husband died.

Mrs Jagan, the nation’s first woman President, would later step down for new elections after term limits were introduced after negotiations during sideline meetings between her and then Opposition Leader Desmond Hoyte at the 1998 CARICOM Summit attended by Nelson Mandela, which agreements were later crystalised in the Herdmanston Accord that both parties agreed to abide by.

Moses never got over the nomination of Bharrat Jagdeo as the PPP’s presidential candidate in the 2000 elections and I wasn’t at all surprised when he joined fellow lawyer and friend Khemraj Ramjattan in the Alliance For Progress (AFC) that he and others had earlier jokingly described as ‘KFC’.

In his eyes, Jagdeo was schooling in the USSR while he and others laboured in the trenches against Burnham and the PNC; and what he saw was a 32-year-old comparable political novice being selected over him, with Mrs Jagan’s support – and that was too much.

I also served as Vice-President of the Guyana Relief Council (GRC) for five of my six years in Guyana and visited just ahead of the last presidential elections to participate in an annual fundraising dinner while Moses served as Prime Minister.

I paid my ritual visit to his home at Bel Air, but out of mutual respect for our similar hard-headed positions on the few issues we weren’t in accord on, neither of us raised his new political alliance, instead opting to silently agree to disagree, instead of risking a lifelong friendship arguing over a matter impossible to agree on.

I have long decided I will not easily fall victim to the Cancel Culture that automatically erases all the good that men and women have done for something done long after, which is why I will not allow Moses’ latter personal political choices to erase his earlier positive professional journalistic deeds.

Given the price he’s paid for daring to be the bold and brave journalist and all the good he did as the dedicated political activist he was, I will not see the ballpark size of his official government pension as anything else than what it is…

And I will agree to openly disagree, over drinks and good food, with both Moses and Ralph over how they see each other at the sunset of their long journey through life as political sidekicks — but only on the following conditions: We’ll be drinking only Saint Lucian rum; we’ll not discuss 21st Century Guyana politics — and Ralph must pop no pills!