Many thanks to Ms Gail Teixeira (‘I never said the gov’t had no interest in Roger Khan’ SN, Nov 4) for establishing once and for all that as Minister of Home Affairs she never stated “I am not interested in Roger Khan” when he was arrested in Suriname. She also makes it clear that the Guyana Police at the time of Khan’s arrest were conducting their own investigations, and that no one could question her commitment to eradicate drug barons and narco-trafficers.
Since I (for one) accept her commitment, I feel compelled to wonder what is the real reason the PPP removed her from Home Affairs and gave us Rohee instead.
Being relatively uninformed from this particular vantage point in faraway London, can someone please inform me whether this MP is now an Independent. Has she had enough of the elected dictatorship (or they of her?) and finally disassociated herself from them?
I met her on several occasions here in London when we were both campaigning against the Burnham dictatorship (will history absolve me?) and after 1992 as Minister of Health, and witnessed first-hand her piety, sensitivity and solemnity. She could never mention the repression and abuses of Burnhamism and paramountcy, from Jonestown to Walter Rodney, without frowning and corrugating her brows. I am now stunned to learn that she was personally capable of making the transition from Health to Home Affairs – and at the time of Roger Khan at that. But wait – did this political nun actually take over Home Affairs from Ronald Gajraj? And the death squad allegations? I just can’t believe this. If so, history will never absolve me now. I will contend that if Ms Teixeira is still in the PPP and not an Independent MP, the only reasonable inference one can draw from her missive is that she is a (political) comedienne.
Not quite in the class of Charles Ramson, the Attorney General, who publicly stated that when the current Health Minister, Dr Ramsammy, was being accused of association with Roger Khan, he thought it was a mistake and that they meant he (Ramson) instead. This was ‘not the Ramsammy’ Ramson knew, and this is surely not the Teixeira I thought I knew.
So why did she not heed Ramson’s gaffe and just keep quiet? For in the process of establishing a small, but salient fact, she has only succeeded in bringing back into stark relief the big picture of the elephant in the room: the exact nature of the relationship between the home affairs ministry, the police investigation she mentions, and her PPP government with one Shaheed ‘Roger’ Khan. She reminds me of what the elderly Welshwoman did when faced with an obscenity written in the snow outside her house: she tottered outside and after much tiring effort only succeeded in removing one huge letter – an ‘S. The insult was now singular and attracted huge interest and the press.
It is understandable, but nevertheless fortunate for all truth-seekers, that a sensitive woman like Ms Teixeira before writing to Stabroek News, could not possibly bring herself to seek sound professional advice from the President’s Office at this particular time. Mr Kwame McCoy must be too busy advising himself and the government about torture anyway.
None of Tony Blair’s ministers could issue a press release, write a letter or even go on television without explicit clearance from his unelected press secretary, Alistair Campbell. MPs could not even speak in the Mother of Parliament without crib cards from Campbell’s office.
Incredibly, given the shambolic nature of the PPP party and government, the first person a PPP Campbell will have roped in and discipline will have to be President Jagdeo himself. And then Kwame McCoy, the Publicity Officer…
Then we will have another Guyanese first – a dictatorship within the elected (and undisciplined) dictatorship. Who in their wildest dreams could really have imagined that anyone could surpass General Burnham in notoriety and infamy – the first President in the world with diplomatic immunity in his own country, Guyana.
Yours faithfully,
Errol M Harry
