Moses Nagamootoo, former long-serving executive member of the PPP, on Wednesday accused Dr Cheddi ‘Joey’ Jagan II of “falsely” claiming that he was again backing the ruling party to promote the legacy of his late father, President Cheddi Jagan.
“He came here to say how he join the PPP to protect his father’s legacy? Which father’s legacy? He spent all his life to destroy that man’s legacy. He should be ashamed to call me a soup-drinker,” Nagamootoo told an Alliance For Change (AFC) public meeting, of a little over 100 attendees, at Industry on Wednesday evening.
Jagan on October 28 last, the same day that Nagamootoo announced that he was joining the AFC’s campaign, endorsed the PPP/Civic, saying he had gone home and pledged allegiance to presidential candidate Donald Ramotar.
Nagamootoo told the meeting that Joey Jagan was embracing the PPP/C because of opportunism associated with his son, Cheddi Jagan III, who is a staffer at Office of the President.
“He is there for a reason. His son works with the Office of the President. He came back from the [United] States as a lawyer and found a job there and there are many more deals in the making,” added Nagamootoo.
The former local government and information minister recalled that Joey Jagan had been a strident critic of the PPP, describing it as a communist organisation that was led by a ‘Gang of Eight,’ and charged that today he is backing the same party for opportunistic reasons.
“I want him to bore eight holes in the cup so that he can get to drink the soup better than anybody else,” said Nagamootoo.
President Bharrat Jagdeo was also not spared Nagamootoo’s wrath, since he also went on to not only personally attack him, but also lambasted his policies such as the Low Carbon Develop-ment Strategy, dubbing him “champion of the heart”.
Nagamootoo said Jagdeo had always felt threatened by his genius since he was the one responsible for writing most of his speeches in the gestational stage of his presidency. He said officials of other Caribbean countries had recognised his work in the president’s speeches and lauded him instead of Jagdeo.
Nagamootoo at one time had eyed either the home or foreign ministry portfolio, and had thrown his hat into the race for the presidential candidature of the PPP before withdrawing.
Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee had told a press conference last week that Nagamootoo failed in his bid to get the PPP/C to toe the line of the opposition on issues such as drug trafficking, death squads, corruption and links to drug lord Shaheed Roger Khan, who is now serving a prison sentence in the United States for drug trafficking.
Nagamootoo, nevertheless, said he will “stand and die” by what he has done because it was what he sincerely believed in.
He likened AFC presidential candidate Khemraj Ramjattan and that party’s leader Raphael Trotman to Dr Cheddi Jagan Snr and late Forbes Burnham in the fight against British colonialism and urged listeners to vote for his party.
