Gentlemen, let the games begin!

Jan 10, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I throw out a challenge to Randy Persaud and Ravi Dev in relation to their latest analyses of my revisionist outlines on contemporary Guyanese history with emphasis on the role of the Jaganite PPP since the birth of that entity.
I refer to his missive; “The Revisionist Hoax and other Fallacies”, Kaieteur News, January 7.
I will make an accusatory assessment of both men’s outpourings before I state the challenge. Why this is so is because the evaluation is tied in to my call for the contest.
Persaud and Dev will get nowhere in their pursuit to educate Guyanese in their dismissive interpretation of the history of the PNC and the writings of Guyanese activists like Kissoon, Hinds, Ogunseye, Westmass, Bakr and others if they keep embellishing their presentations with the use of a super-abundance of theoretical modules against which their theses cannot stand up and for which the very indictments they make against us using those very frameworks can be used against them.
Some powerful, and I really mean powerful examples are in order.
Take Dev. Here is what he is saying – there are two kinds of revisionism positive and negative; Kissoon’s own is negative. I, Ravi Dev accept revisionism, but the positive type not Kissoon’s negative brand So far so good. So Dev now launches into his positive revisionism and it turns out to be falsifications of Guyanese history, distortion of historical facts and political propaganda for the PPP. Kissoon’s negative revisionism is fought with negative revisionism of Dev himself. So Dev says I’m engaged in negative revision and I say the same if him.
Dev accuses me of subjective writings. Dev is guilty of the same. In the debate between me and Dev, in steps Randy Persaud.
He accuses us of negationism. Readers may think that Persaud had added to the theoretical muscles in Dev’s polemical vilifications of us by the introduction of the term, negationism.
All negationism means is negative revisionism. And Persaud himself in his defence of Indian hegemony and the flawed politics of the PPP since the fifties in his letters to the newspapers the past four years has been guilty of the worse crimes of negationsm.
Now it is important to remember that negationism is the denial of historical crimes (as with David Irving who writes about the fiction of the Holocaust. Dev and Persaud are negationists (not to mention the utterly despicable negationism of their friend Annan Boodram who shamelessly denied the crimes committed by the PPP and shamelessly pointed to one guilty race; Boodram’s actually painted Jagan as a ‘Gandhiist’. How can a supporter of Stalinist repression and denial of free election as a principle be a Gandhiist?).
Here is my challenge to Persaud and Dev:
Let us discuss the comparative roles in government of the PPP and PNC; the historical role of Dr Jagan, Mrs. Jagan and the PPP; the specific policies of the PPP since 1992; the comparisons of corruptibilies, debaucheries, venalities between the PNC states and the PPP administration.
Let us do all these things without the paraphernalia of theoretical paradigms, invocation of philosophers’ names and social science models. We are getting nowhere with these intellectualisms and Dev and Persaud are using these frameworks to obfuscate the nastiness of the PPP’s evolution.
In other words, I am being blunt – Dev and Persaud are hiding behind high-sounding names and intellectual outlines that have not shielded them from being exposed as propagandists. Dev is particularly egregious in his facades. He begins every rebuttal quoting all kinds text-book writers that add not a modicum of ingenuity to his propagandistic protection of the PPP. I do not want to be personal and I ask readers to forgive me if I come across as such but Dev is using the writers’ name to intimidate people. They will shy away from confronting him because he quotes Hegel and modern day French philosophers. The truth is none is relevant to discussing the contemporary history of the PPP and the PNC.
Let me end with an emphatic repetition. Let us continue the discourse on actual people and events. Let us deal with PPP crimes, PNC crimes etc. For example; I am contending that the PPP Government since 1999 is worse in character and morality than the Burnham regime.
Can we have an exchange on that without recourse to the Frankfurt School and French deconstructionists? Another example; I am contending that the Americans were logical in their thinking to remove Jagan in the sixties because as a leader of a western country, Jagan did not accept free and fair election as a universal value.
He supported its eradication in communist polities and unto his death was a fanatical admirer of Cuba which does not have free elections. I call this revisionist thinking of the positive kind.
Gentlemen, let the games begin! Those with faint hearts, keep out! And for the very last; I never ever wrote that Burnham is a saint. A wager is extended. If Persaud can prove that, let him tell me what finest malt I can buy him. If I win, I will tell him which albums I want. He knows the genres of music I like. He bought two albums for me before
Frederick Kissoon

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