I MEAN it without insult; I find Raphael’s Trotman’s 50-page booklet amusing. Please see my review of it yesterday. I find many of the critics of the government highly amusing, but I will leave that for another column

I will quote parts of the book and my comment will follow. Q is for quote. C is for comment

Q1 – “The Guyanese people need to hear definitively from me on certain matters.”

C1- Since it is Trotman who selects the issues, why don’t the Guyanese people put to Trotman some other matters. For example, during the five months of election rigging, Trotman noted publicly that the then Chief Election Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield had the sole jurisdiction of asserting the number of votes cast and that there was no law that can dismiss or reject his final report. For a rejection of this legal fiction, see my column of July 23, 2020 titled: “The Lone Ranger” starring Lo Lo and directed by Raphael Trotman.” Since the Chief Justice ruled that the CEO cannot be a lone ranger and must be directed by GECOM, does Trotman feel that at the time he misinformed the nation?

Q2- “These writings do not set out to apologise, but to explain…”

C2- There is much in the book that Trotman has to apologise for and explanations are interpretations; they lie in the mind of the describer and may be far from reality. Trotman needs to apologise for insulting words he said about the island-states of CARICOM, during the five months of election rigging, referring to them, as too small to understand the counting of votes in a large country like Guyana. For a rejection of this abject insult, see my column of July 15, 2020, headlined, “The crass ignorance of Raphael Trotman.”

Q3- “I recognised the inherent humaneness and greatness in President Granger.”

C3 – This statement about Mr. Granger is the opposite that Mr. Ralph Ramkarran offered on Mr. Granger on Monday night on the Gildarie-Freddie Kissoon Show. Mr. Ramkarran’s experience in politics in Guyana would be double that of Mr. Trotman. If Mr. Granger is great, then surely Dr. Irfaan Ali has to be greater. Dr. Ali has reached out to the population of this country that no other governmental leader has done since self-government started in the 1950s. The Guyanese president has reached out across the racial divide consistently for the past three years and has received substantial embrace in return. I have not seen that politics in Granger for the five years he had been in power.

Q4- “I have heard ridiculous rumours about me plotting to harm Mr. Desmond Hoyte and challenging him for leadership. Both of these are completely false.”

C4- Why they were not rumours about any other PNC hierarchical personality trying to harm Mr. Hoyte? Why Trotman only? And would it not have been appropriate if Trotman had given the circumstances under which that particular rumour was born? Rumours may have no relation to facts but rumours have origins and sources.

I will now offer the context in which the rumour started. During the period of “mo fyaah/slo fyaah,” the PNC’s central executive committee met and there was a divided opinion on strategy. Mr. Hoyte advanced the strategy of a dialogue with President Jagdeo in which the PNC would put forward a plan of delivery of resources and services to the African constituencies in Guyana.

Trotman led the opposition to that direction supported by violent advocacy from Andy Gouveia (deceased). Their perspective was that “so fyaah/mo fyaah” should be left to achieve its objective and it was achieving its objective, so there should be no talk with then President Jagdeo. Mr. Hoyte’s proposal won out and there was an attempt to overturn his car when it stopped on Vlissengen Road outside the Office of the President where Mr. Hoyte was to meet with President Jagdeo.

The two did meet and the meeting was referred to as the National Dialogue. In the meantime, a violent Gouveia was bent on creating mayhem. He drove one of his henchmen to Brickdam and threw a grenade in the compound of NTN- Channel 69, killing an innocent employee whose heart was pierced by a sharp piece of wood.

Q5- “I was inspired by the Mr. Granger’s deep love for country.”

C5- I find Trotman’s book really funny. A man who loves his country in one swoop dismissed 7,000 Indians on the sugar estates in a country that Trotman and Granger knew was always a boiling cauldron of ethnic anger. Some 42,000 families were affected and there were multiple suicides.