HERE is how I got the title for this column, and I am glad it arrived the way it did. On Wednesday, I decided my piece for Sunday would be an analysis of Khemraj Ramjattan’s role in the recent demonstrations by some Berbice sugar workers. Of course, a columnist knows what he/she wants to write on days before. And you ruminate on the title. The title for an article is something that never comes immediately because you want to get the right one for reasons of impact.

So, Wednesday night, I was going home late (something I seldom do) after the live recording of the Freddie Kissoon-Gildarie Show with guest, Dharamkumar Seeraj, Member of Parliament for the PPP. I always take the seawall roundabout that leads to the East Coast and drive along the Atlantic (with car windows down of course so the breeze can toss your hair around.)

In the car stereo was playing an orchestral disco song by Argentinean conductor, Bebu Silvetti, named “Voyage of no Return.” I got to love the song during the year I spent doing absolutely nothing with my time after I refused to do compulsory National Service as a UG student and was kicked out of UG. I have always loved that song. The strings just go on forever and they are interspersed with mellow, whispering Ray Conniff-like voices.

“Voyage of no Return” is one of my all-time favourite songs that reminds me of the fragility of everything, that reminds me of the core meaning of Martin Heidegger’s great philosophy text, “Being and Time.” If there is any song you should listen to while driving along the ocean with a strong wind ‘washing’ your face, it is Silvetti’s lovely orchestral output, “Voyage of no Return”

That night, I found the title for today’s article on Khemraj Ramjattan’s sad but silly exploitation of those sugar workers who have to reclaim their understanding of humans and the flaws that lie within them. How could sugar workers of all people have a discourse on their problems with, of all people, Khemraj Ramjattan? It was the sugar workers who made Ramjattan. It was sugar workers who were responsible for Ramjattan’s accession to power in 2015.

It was Ramjattan who publicly stated that it was he, and not President Granger or any APNU minister that initiated the closure of the estates that resulted in the retrenchment of 7000 workers which, when you take into account families and relatives, the victims may run into over 40,000 souls. The retrenchment was just the beginning of the nightmare. The APNU+AFC regime refused to offer severance pay and the workers had to take the government to court. Don’t these sugar workers who went to Ramjattan for help know this?

Berbice sugar workers going to Ramjattan for monies they claimed the government owes them is simply surreal; such a thing does not happen in real life. It was this very man that just four years ago (not four decades) that put 7000 sugar workers out of employment, the very sugar workers that voted for him in 2011 and 2015.

Here is a piece of information about Ramjattan only revealed by me about three years ago and I am repeating it now. Well known cricketer commentator, Naim Chan has a daily morning programme on channel 6. Ramjattan was once his guest. Chan described to Ramjattan the expressions of Charandass Persaud that he was the AFC’s parliamentary representative for Berbice but he knew absolutely nothing about the decision to close the Berbice sugar estates. He was never informed about it.

You are not going to believe what Ramjattan told Chan. He said that the PNC’s Chief Whip, Amna Ally, was assigned the task to liaison with Charrandass and inform him of government’s policies in Berbice. I sincerely do not believe that there are moments of asininities in modern Guyanese politics that can match this one.

The AFC is half of a coalition government, has a parliamentary representative for Berbice, yet it is a PNC leader that has to dialogue with the AFC’s Berbice representative to inform him of government’s plans in Berbice. Prominent Berbice lawyer, Ryan Crawford told me that he would play dominoes at his gate with Charran and retrenched sugar workers would pass and cuss Charran, referring to him as a traitor. Is this the man those protesting sugar workers went to for advice?

Someone needs to visit those protestors, both the ones who made bail and the ones who cannot raise bail to tell them about the disappearance of Ramjattan. He made a voyage after 2015 from which there was no return. Ramjattan’s voyage lies in depths deeper than where the Titanic now rests.