It would be easy to tell Henry Jeffrey to STFU …
..but it would be better to highlight his duplicity in his mistitled letter, that reads more like a prostitute posting his/her vital statistics and repertoire of unconventional performance in the Sleazy Section of the local Wanted Ads, in an obvious overture to claim political heft.
As always, Jeffery makes it hard not make an analysis personal since he tends to project himself into the story.
The membership of the Alliance for Change (AFC) best represents the political dysfunction it was established to fix… he says.
For real???
This opening salvo reads like a self –narrative, for one does recall Mr. Jeffrey’s thrust into prominence – on the back of some political dysfunction– as the one politician claiming to understand the concept and application of Cooperative Socialism; then being given the expanse of Kuru Kuru College to indoctrinate students in the practice which failed because it was more theoretical than practical – and for reasons that extend well beyond the scope of this retort.
So he fixed nothing, was subsequently fired by Desmond Hoyte whose threshold for grifters or their synonyms was sub level, then he wormed his way over to the PPP which saw victory in anything that appeared to be bad news for the PNC …
…even a defunct Jeffery who, for a minute, had to sell tents at Alfresco Entertainment when the previous government had shut him out.
Cheddi, of fabled principle, swooned when opportunist Jeffery made a common sense prediction that the PPP would win 1992 election and then crowned him head of a think tank…more for political nose- thumbing than for Jeffery’s thinking ability.
Predictably, say the gambling minds, he quickly arrived at his level of incompetence – even at Camp PPP, where governing was a freestyle mix of public appearances and acquiring wealth beyond one’s salary.
So, Mr. Jeffery would be wise to realize that political dysfunction is as old as civilization itself and that the cheap potshots at “Fixing” only opens up a can of political worms his tenure as a Politician has already told us he has no constitution to digest.
Obviously, there is some old antagonism in his fact- free exaltation of Charrandass and it may be me because I’m finding no coherence in his points…an operatic casting of Principle versus Corruption ending with Charrandass in a cape.
So, let me break this disparate string of thoughts into bite-size pieces to ensure that we cover the points he has made and in context.
It’s only fair.
He lionizes this Charrandass Persaud by trying to encase him in a quasi philosophical setting with some academically diluted questions, then tops it off with a citation of Irish Philosopher, Edmund Burke and conscience voting.
Let’s just go for the jugular on this one, especially since Mr. Jeffery, in his intellectual laboratory, tries to recreate Charrandass in the image of folk hero with sprinkles of phrases like “interesting ethical questions” accented with the casual introduction of “conscience and morals”.
The Jefferey’s of politics rely on consumers to wait to be fed well pruned information by men with vaulting ambitions.
Many of us trust ourselves.
We read and this is what we’ve learned.
Charrandass’ calculus for political gamesmanship can be traced back to 1997 when he was a resident of Canada and employee of Laurentian Bank in that country.
After losing his job there to downsizing, he reverted to being Guyanese – said facetiously – and returned to the country to pursue a degree in law.
And why not…it would be cheaper with the Canadian currency exchange…
He was admitted to the Guyana Bar Association on October 11th 2006 and embarked upon a career of legal skirmishing which he describes as a successful legal practice, though there are clients who may choose to differ…as in Harmati Bissoon who retained Charrandrass on a land deal with a Basdai Umrao, which resulted in some sketchy fraudulent activity that forced a Judge in Berbice High Court to open an investigation into seemingly illegal activity involving Charrandass.
More reading confirmed that Charrandass Persaud seemed to have an incontinent enthusiasm for executing land deals with cloudy details…and undue enrichment.
And that’s not the full complement of the Charrandass repertoire.
By 2011, he declared alignment with the AFC then became implacably hostile, a veritable political bull who toted around his own China shop.
Pugnacious and obnoxious drew attention.
And with this calculus in overdrive, he catapulted his posturing on a Live weekly call- in programme, ‘Issues of the People’, a programme paid for by the Alliance for Change (AFC) and aired on Dave’s Television Channel Eight (DTV-8 by proclaiming that Donald Ramotar did not attend UG.
Donald threatened to sue and Charrandass received a letter from Attorney- at- Law, Adrian Anamayah. He then recanted and melodramatically apologized claiming that he – a lawyer, whose job is evidence ….
“I got that information from the now Registrar of the University of Guyana, Mr. Vincent Alexander. I did not check with him before and there is where I went wrong. He attended University of Guyana. He has a Degree in Economics. So, Mr. Donald Ramotar, I’m sorry that I Said you did not attend the University of Guyana; you did attend UG; we now know that. And I will tell other people that you attended the University of Guyana and you do have a Degree in Economics”, Persaud said on live television.
Maybe he curtseyed… sure sounds like a fitting end to a whimpish withdrawal but that’s just my imagination.
And such was the career of Charrandass Persaud, making politics a contact sport in which he denigrated and retracted , fabricated and obfuscated.
What gets you more coverage than saying, about a prominent female hospital official, Dr. Vishalya ‘Artie’ Sharma “Sharma is trying to control her own body weight and she can’t do that; she has to control the whole operation of the New Amsterdam Hospital—the girl is so fat,she could probably not fit in the front seat of her jeep. She can’t control,her own body weight, she is controlling our lives at the New Amsterdam Hospital…”
Then he apologized to her on live TV by citing another woman who may have assaulted him Shabana—Zulfikar’s [Mustapha’s] wife—the lady who punched me at the (2011)Diwali Motorcade— she knows she did it, but for one reason or the other,the DPP nullified the matter as evidence of his genteel nature towards women who brought out the troglodyte in him “Dr Vindhya Persaud so disgusted me that I felt like hauling (her) off the stage,” but only those…not ALL women…
While we’re at it let’s throw in Head-teacher of Rose Hall Estate Primary School in East Canje, Ms Beverly Hazelwood who also consulted the services of the Anamayah Law Firm and sent a lawyer’s letter to Persaud for allegedly saying that she was “a sick woman”.
And as if on cue came his “I never said anything to do with you being mentally ill and you should be in an asylum. I said that you’re a sick woman as a headmistress to tell the children that they cannot bring their lunch to school, and they must go home to eat their lunch and come back to school because they make too much noise .
And that’s the sociopolitical footprint of Charrandass Persaud…benign and reverend enough to garnish Jefferey’s ordination.
Continues Jeffrey: Charrandass Persaud lived in the sugar belt and one of the most offensive acts of the coalition government and the clearest sign of the lack of empathy for those of Indian ethnicity occurred when it threw 7000 sugar workers on the breadline…..
Jeffrey, who was Minister of labor at one point during his tenure in the PPP when they were slotting him where he would cause the least damage because, per Guyana Wikileaks cable he was not “terribly effective” , had to know that his sympathy for Charrandass because “acts of the coalition government and the clearest sign of the lack of empathy for those of Indian ethnicity occurred when it threw 7000 sugar workers” would not get past those of us who do not see him as a credible source.
I mean the “Indian Ethnicity” thing is so damn cheap.
But let me stay on topic and confirm that Guyana had been advised, decades earlier ,that the UK subsidy for sugar was going to end in 2009 .
The PPP was in power since 1992 which gave it 23 years to prepare for the sugar workers whose jobs were in impending jeopardy.
They did nothing.
The sugar workers – and in case Jeffery didn’t know, many are black- were subsequently laid off because their PPP government failed to retool them in the face of industry recession.
And just because this Jeffrey – the PPP’s token Negro, who was often cited by Cheddi as proof positive that his was not a purely Indian Party – did such an especially poor job, even by his standards, of making this Charrandass Persaud into Father Theresa, I’ll refer to the recent tussle Charrandass had with Bharaat Jagdeo when he, in perpetual headline – grabbing mode – suggested that sugar workers who didn’t send their children to school because they lacked the liquid cash, should be imprisoned.
So, Mr. Jeffrey, Patron Saint Charrandass is not.
Now the PNC and AFC are not blameless in this recent instalment of politics
à la Charrandass.
Both Parties have demonstrated an insulting level of ineptitude in the execution of the nation’s government. Leadership is an ascension which gives them the keys to the castle and the right to look down their upturned noses at the plebs in the courtyard. It’s all about power, their power, and they’re prepared to take any politician into their fold to make that happen.
Charrandass was more than a rogue and a renegade. His was of blind ambition-the kind that is self-serving, with no care for the nation. He was an erratic operator, a perpetual embarrassment to the AFC. His dutty linen remained in public. Yet they kept him. And he was brazen, emboldened by the lack of repudiation for his disrespect of an electorate that got him his job. He made his membership in the AFC a revolving door, announcing resignation then returning like the prodigal son into open arms.
APNU was the larger arm of the Coalition which had a one vote margin between them and a rabid Opposition that has left a trail of mayhem as evidence of how it governs. They knew the nature of the Charrandass Persaud beast and clearly made no effective effort to ensure that the AFC removed him as an MP.
He had committed enough infractions to be banished…at the very least.
And this is the information that should be dominating the airwaves…not the calls for resignation from the PPP citing a Constitution and Elections Mandates they ignored repeatedly at both local General levels… not their claims of no confidence in Government when their Party is not representative of the fabric of Guyana, when there remains storm clouds over the “conscience vote” of Charrandass Persaud whose conscience, with all of its warts, has been an open book for decades in Guyana.
There are more than corollary consequences for deliberate lethargy and cavalier incompetence in the Communications and Public Relations spheres of politics. Polemicists, fabulists, conspiracists, take over the media landscape.
That’s why we hear the Jeffery’s and the other miscreants above the media silence coming from the Coalition.
Nevertheless, when Mr. Jeffery, in opportunistic effort to create some sort of posterity for this Charrandass Persaud, leads with a Headline ‘Silence or Exile’…it should never be allowed to stand.
Exile is certainly not going back to a country in which you lived previously and in which you are reputedly a citizen.
And Silence is not to be confused with going against an agreed upon line of voting at the last minute because of invidious intent.
Mr Jeffrey dies again; and again on the wrong hill.
