Early Sunday morning, Dr. Josh Ramsammy called my home for my permission to give Dr. Bud Mangal my telephone number. He said Dr. Mangal wanted to speak to me with reference to a passage in yesterday’s Freddie Kissoon column. That column cited a letter he wrote giving permission to Mr. Khalawan to export four giant anteaters.
I had no problem with the request since I know Dr. Mangal very well. Then Dr. Mangal told me something that calls into question the very integrity of this government.
Whenever I hear the name Dr. Mangal, I always remember a funny incident at the Arya Samaj mandir on D’Urban Street when I was six years old. Life is funny. On Thursday night, on the seawall strolling with my wife, I mentioned to her this hilarious story. Now three days later, I am repeating it for my readers. The truth is, whenever I hear Dr. Mangal’s name, this item in my past spontaneously comes to mind.
My mom use to take some of her kids to Sunday service at the Arya Samaj mandir at the corner of D’Urban Street and Vlissengen Road, a property owned by Dr, Mangal’s parents. I was simply a naughty guy. After service, I would not be content with the customary bag of prasad that was shared out to each churchgoer after service.
One Sunday, I collected seven bags and hid them under the building. On my eighth trip, which was my last, I got the surprise of my life when the seven bags were torn to pieces and the contents devoured by a huge goat.
I grew up respecting Dr. Mangal. I was a mere sixteen years old when he was a politicised doctor who, along with other professionals including Dr. Prasad who founded Prasad Hospital, formed the Guyana Anti-Discrimination Movement (GADM).
Raymond Gaskin worked as the administrator of Prasad Hospital and when GADM founded the newspaper, Liberator, Gaskin became the editor. It was then I got to know Gaskin, and somehow since that time, I felt something was not right about Gaskin. I never sought to have a prolonged conversation with him.
Dr. Bud Mangal is one of the persons who has defied my capacity for analysing characters. What does he see in the PPP Government that has drawn him so close to a clique of people who are essentially Burnhamite in their blood and in their bones? The Mangal family that owned the Hindu church I went to as a six-year-old boy was a good, decent family. Dr. Mangal is a decent human being. What is he doing with the PPP?
I could understand if he had loved Cheddi Jagan, then maybe he saw the need to help Cheddi’s party.
I once asked Bernard De Santos why he stays with the PPP. This was after Bernard had voted for the implementation of a search committee at UG for a new Vice-Chancellor. Freedom House ordered the Council to scrap the advertisement inviting applicants and directed the Council to confirm Dr. James Rose as Vice-Chancellor.
While waiting for my libel case to call in front of Justice Winston Moore, we chatted outside of Justice Moore’s court and he answered my question.
He said that he stays with the PPP because he owes it to Cheddi Jagan. I believe it is the same with Dr. Mangal. But Cheddi Jagan is dead and none of the PPP leaders have even an inch of integrity that Cheddi Jagan had, so why are Bernard Dos Santos and Bud Mangal still serving the PPP government?
Once at my cousin’s wedding, the son of Attorney, Lalta Ramgopaul, Dr. Mangal and I talked about the nature of the PPP government. He said things that made me feel that we had a lot in common. Then he became Chairman of GUYOIL, Chairman of the Wildlife Authority and a PPP representative in the Election Commission. It was clear to me that he was now a key PPP player.
One day I cornered him since I knew that he was very close to Dr. Josh Ramsammy. Bharrat Jagdeo was in diapers; Roger Luncheon was happily living in the USA; Clement Rohee and Donald Ramotar were living in Czechoslovakia printing World Marxist Review; and other current PPP leaders were little children when Dr, Joshua Ramsammy almost gave his life for democracy in Guyana.
His role as Pro-Chancellor of UG was unceremoniously terminated by Freedom House. I asked Dr. Mangal how he could serve the PPP so faithfully yet let them do that to his best friend. He had no answer but said it was wrong what they did to Dr. Ramsammy.
When he spoke to me on the phone early yesterday morning, I raised the Ramsammy question again. Again he had no answer but to say that he doesn’t agree with what the PPP did to his best friend.
So what did Dr. Mangal ring me for? He wanted me to put into proper perspective the order on his personal letter-head directing Mr. Khalawan to grant permission to Animal Farm to export four anteaters to the Czech Republic, information that I used in my column yesterday.
He said that the importer in the Czech Republic stood to lose a lot of money because the Americans were moving to stop the export of animals from countries like Guyana. He had to act quickly in the interest of the importer.
There was little time left so he made the issue to Khalawan on his personal letter head. He advised me that if I read the edict, (which I have in my possession), I would see that it was a one-off permit. Indeed it was. He went on to tell me that Mr. Khalawan used his (Dr. Mangal’s one-off permission) to export five giant anteaters and not four, which he (Dr. Mangal) instructed Mr. Khalawan to do.
As Dr. Mangal went on to explain his side of the story in the tale of the dolphin export, I asked him why did his board not move to sanction Odinga Lumumba for exporting wildlife when he was not on the list of licensed wildlife exporters. Then he dropped a bombshell. It is for President Jagdeo and Roger Luncheon to explain Mr. Lumumba’s conduct to the nation. This is time now for the government to discipline its officials who behave badly.
Dr. Mangal told me that his board summoned Mr. Lumumba to explain his lapse. According to Dr. Mangal in his early morning telephone conversation with me, Mr. Lumumba told him that the fact that he (Lumumba) worked with Mr. Khalawan, he (Lumumba) was under the expectation that the board knew he was an exporter. Dr. Mangal agreed that this is a ‘mambo-jambo’ explanation but when I requested that he sanction Lumumba as the chairman of the board, he said that is something for the Office of the President to do.
But this is the same Dr. Mangal who sanctioned Mr. Khalawan. Life is funny. People are funny. But I am not amused.