CERTIFIED NEE NEE MAKARAM CRABDAAG  

This is my second and final review of Moses Nagamootoo’s second autobiography titled, “Dear Land of Guyana.”
My first assessment was published on Tuesday. How can one understand a person who after 40 years of being in his party’s hierarchy, stepped away because he said his democratic instincts did not allow for him to stay but found himself in the identical situation with another party and accepted the same treatment?

Throughout the book, Nagamootoo runs down the PPP, says all types of negative things about them but stays completely silent when his new-found friends in the PNC and AFC proved to be worse than the PPP he so condemned.

This is where people will not forgive Nagamootoo. He claimed that he singlehandedly engineered an APNU+AFC victory in 2015 but even before the ink was dried on the swearing in document, his colleagues in his new outfit, APNU began to toss him side.

Any normal human would then declare the riot act. Any human would say: “This is not the reason I brought you victory, stop or I will bring you down?”
The story of Nagamootoo’s non-functioning role in the APNU+AFC government of 2015-2020 is one that is so sickening that one has to look very hard to find appropriate adjectives to describe him.

In the book, Nagamootoo quoted many times, the positive things about his political history but he chose not to quote my criticism of his extreme aridity as Prime Minister as a daily columnist who was critical of the bizarre direction the 2015 government went into. After he published his book, Nagamootoo must know I will read it and contradict him because he knows that I know he was just a footnote in the APNU+AFC regime.

It is relevant to note that on reading the book, if you come from another planet, and knew nothing about Guyana, you would not have known that the government was a coalition in which the partners have to share power.
Throughout the book, Granger comes across as the leader of a majority party in office when he was not.

Nagamootoo kept writing that the President did this and that, and made this and that and wanted this and that.
Here is my experience with Nagamootoo when he was Prime Minister. I met him shortly after he became Prime Minister and told him for the purpose of practical politics as the leader of half of the government, it is strategically unwise to have his office inside the presidential building. He agreed but stayed there for the entire life of the government.

I asked him to facilitate a scholarship for someone which is a request I made several times when the PPP was in power and though I was a critic of the PPP, I succeeded. After enquiring, he told me that THEY (emphasis mine) only giving scholarship for medicine. There and then I knew this man had become a national laughing stock. Who were THEY? Wasn’t this man half of the government?

I remember one incident with Nagamootoo that I will never forget. I was driving out Shell gas station on Vlissengen Road when he rang me asking me to locate Leonard Craig, the head of the National Broadcasting Authority because THEY (emphasis mine again) have fired him. Who were THEY? Craig was an employee of a department directly under Nagamootoo.

Nagamootoo rained down heavy criticism of his former comrades in the PPP in his autobiography but many of them (some I knew personally) were/are better politicians than those we had in the APNU+AFC regime including Nagamootoo himself.
Here are some interesting things in the book. The PNC has onto this day praised President Granger for requesting a recount of all ballots during the 2020 election. During the election rigging, in one of my columns, I challenged that story based on the confidential information I had at the time.

The Americans asked PM Mia Mottley to arrange a recount of the contentious Region Four ballots. Mottley put it to Granger who unreasonably insisted on all the ballots in an effort to win the game knowing that Jagdeo would disagree.

But Jagdeo agreed. On page 13 of his memoir, Nagamootoo said he was present when the visiting CARICOM Prime Ministers put it to Granger that there should be a recount of the ballots and Granger agreed. So it was not Granger who requested the recount.

Finally, Nagamootoo touched on the AFC’s decision to remove him as prime ministerial candidate in 2020 but was completely silent on why. It is my firm view that it was because the AFC, particularly David Patterson and Nigel Hughes, felt under Ramjattan as PM, they would have stood up to Granger and the PNC unlike what occurred under Nagamootoo.