Alliance For Change (AFC) member Moses Nagamootoo has hit back at allegations from the PPP/C against him on the campaign trail as being all “lies.”
Nagamootoo, who was associated for more than 50 years with the PPP, last month resigned from the party and joined the AFC. Since then, he has come in for bitter attacks by PPP/C members on the political hustings. Nagamootoo himself has also been extremely critical of the PPP on the campaign trail. “I am humbled to have attracted such great attention for my life’s work. I wish I could have taken these garlands of thorns to my grave — Judas, soup-drinker, traitor, neemakharaam, lowrah, gutless, visionless, loser, vagabond, hypocrite, naga-dog, naga-goose, labaria, opportunist, ochro, etc,” Nagamootoo said in a statement released on Monday.
In the release, Nagamootoo responded to several issues raised by the PPP members including assertions made by President Bharrat Jagdeo and the party’s presidential Donald Ramotar that he only left the party because he lost the nomination to become its presidential candidate. “More Lies!” Nagamootoo declared in response, explaining that he withdrew from the selection process because party members were excluded from choosing a candidate.
“Ramotar was hand-picked by a gang within the Central Committee (CC),” he said. “I refused to appear before this body. I informed Ramotar on 18th January, 2011 that “the CC has no mandate to select a candidate. I now say emphatically that the exclusion of party members in selecting their presidential candidate is an irreversible and costly mistake,” he added. “There was no election only a rigged selection,” he added. Nagamootoo also responded to the PPP’s rejection of his claim that he was identified by late president Dr Cheddi Jagan to succeed him. Several members of the PPP have denied Nagamootoo’s assertions about the incident in November 1996. Nagamootoo said that on May 18, 2004, he reminded Ramotar in a letter that “(t)here should be no myth about what Cheddi Jagan said at Lethem.
I want to see Robert Persaud going on record on this issue. He was there! Jagdeo and Ramotar never before denied what Dr. Jagan said. Ramotar tried to give it a ‘twist,’ ” he said. Nagamootoo referred to a June, 8 2004 letter he allegedly received from Ramotar which contained this “twist.” “It is clear that Cde. Cheddi must have been saying that when he is no longer available the Party would be in good hands because it has capable leaders. He must have mentioned you in that context,” Ramotar was quoted as saying. Nagamootoo, however, contended that Ramotar never denied what Cheddi Jagan said, but only gave it his own twist.
President Jagdeo has claimed that one member, John Silas said to him that Cheddi Jagan never named Nagamootoo as his successor. That, Nagamootoo said, was a lie, while noting that Silas was not at the Lethem meeting. Nagamootoo said he was also required to attend a meeting where Janet Jagan demanded that he explain what happened at Lethem.
“I related what Comrade Cheddi said, and my reaction to that by suppressing publication of the remarks that I could possibly be a replacement for him at the 1997 elections. I explained why I had an angry argument with the Organiser [John Silas] for being absent from the meeting, when the microphones broke down; how, when he told me that I had no authority to question him, I chided him for not hearing what Comrade Cheddi had said, and how I added sarcastically ‘You could be looking at the next president!,’” Nagamootoo recounted. “That matter was never again raised in my presence with (President) Cheddi Jagan. I was to be at his side until the fatal day that he was flown out from Guyana during February 1997, only to die days later. He never denied what he had said at Lethem,” he said.
Nagamootoo also rejected Jagdeo’s accusation that he had lied about Mrs Jagan, saying that she never promised Nagamootoo the position to be Vice President of Guyana. “Twice when this issue came up, Mrs. Jagan said she could not remember. At 80 plus, it is fine not to remember. But she never denied. She never said that I lied on her,” he said. According to him, he and Mrs Jagan shared a good relationship even up to her death and he recounted that she had written to him days before her death informing him of a recent injury she had suffered.
Meanwhile, Nagamootoo said that he had also chosen to live a modest life, giving up a well-paying job to go and work for the PPP. He said that in recent years he also declined to participate in the largesse of the government even though he had received certain offers.
