SHAMELESS NEE NEE NEEMAKARAM  

I read Moses Nagamootoo’s recently released Part Two of his autobiography a few afternoons ago on the Fort Groyne jetty while my dog looked for mongoose. I came home and titled the column, “Book Review: Nagamootoo is the second circus in town,” referring to the current Mexican circus at D’Urban Park.

Something was nagging at me telling me that something was missing in the review. I reread the book at Fort Groyne the next afternoon, and a larger picture emerged. This is a comical book about a tragic man whose psyche is perhaps permanently damaged.

I lost all respect for Nagamootoo after his role in government in the 2015 administration was ignominious, reduced to nothingness. But I say in all sincerity that after the publication of this second autobiography, he has become one of the worst politicians a democratic country anywhere in the world has produced.

His first memoir, published in 2015 was titled, “Fragments from Memory” which I reviewed on Tuesday, October 31, 2023. The current book is a vast extension of that autobiography titled: “Dear Land of Guyana.” This is a terrible book to review and the analysis is marred by the bouts of anger from the reviewer.

Definitely, one column will not suffice so I will have to continue where I left off here. It is clear as a tropical day in Guyana that Nagamootoo had no advisor when he was writing this memoir because you don’t praise yourself on one page on your achievements, then on the next page write about your reduction into nothingness.

Let us break down this oxymoronic text of comicality and tragedy. There is a full chapter on how the Americans allegedly helped the PPP rig the 2020 elections using a PR firm named, Mercury. The descriptions are just laughable. Cathy Hughes and Khemraj Ramjattan informed the nation that three Russians and a Libyan came to shape the election results and were expelled.
Nagamootoo told us it was Mercury officials that were expelled. So if the Americans set about rigging the election through Mercury and Mercury was removed how come they still tampered with it?

Nagamootoo tells us that the PPP brought an English company to rig the 2015 election named Cambridge Analytica. He wrote that they couldn’t save the PPP because the PPP was hemorrhaging (his word) support. This is exactly what happened to Nagamootoo and his colleagues in the PNC and AFC. They couldn’t win in 2020 because the AFC was hemorrhaging support – the votes Nagamootoo brought in 2011 and 2015 had gone in 2020 so the PPP was assured of victory.

There is no chapter on the relation between the AFC and APNU while power was being exercised. Any Guyanese seeing this book in front of his/her eyes, would want to buy it because they cannot wait to know what happened between the AFC and PNC. There is absolutely no discussion on this.

You have to feel sorry for Nagamootoo and you have to feel that his psychology is different from any other human on Planet Earth when you read just a few lines on what he described Granger did to him just days after the APNU+AFC won the 2015 election. He said from day one, Granger showed his true colours (maybe no pun is intended) when he stripped him of his Cabinet responsibilities. He outlined how he was hurt at the 2015 Independence celebration when Granger described the politics of the sixties in racially, anti-Jagan terms. Nagamootoo said he squirmed because he loved Jagan so much and had to listen to Granger saying those things about Cheddi.

How can any human be so stupid? Throughout the book, maybe on most of the pages, Nagamootoo waxes lyrical on his role of creating a PPP minority government in 2011 and how he won the 2015 election for the APNU-AFC, yet he cannot see the connection of Granger’s domination of the man who promised Guyanese so much and the loss of the 2020 election. Nagamootoo in 2020 was seen as a betrayer by the people who voted for him in 2011 and 2015.

The PPP did not need Mercury to win. It won because Guyanese who loved Nagamootoo ended up hating him and intensely so. Nagamootoo praises himself non-stop in the book about his role in the 2011 and 2015 losses of the PPP but refuses to see the 2020 loss of APNU-AFC was his fault (along with the AFC).

In a second article on the book, I will look at more oxymoronic manifestations of laughable moments and within those moments tragic dimensions of the politics of Nagamootoo. Apart from its comicality, this book makes you sad to see how humans you know can fall apart so tragically.