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Randy Persaud, Cuba, and mankind’s’ eternal struggle to be free

Jul 10, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

By the time you read this page, you would have heard the news about Randy Persaud’s departure from his beloved homeland that he loved so much but from which he ran away the past forty years only to return a few months ago and re-proclaim his love. Now he is gone again.
Of course he left behind a CV that is long as the Essequibo River only that like the little gods he served, he dwells in fiction, not that for a moment the Guyanese people believe the likes of Randy Persaud.
Here are two little stories about Randy Persaud. One is well known because I have written about it before and an enraged Persaud replied. The other I never bother to reflect on. I took him and his wife on a tour of UG and when he saw the environment, he yelled out, “God, they can’t paint this place?”
I published that exclamation of his because I had no idea at the time that he was morphing into a sycophant for Mr. Jagdeo. I know Burnham, Jagan and Hoyte could have attracted people to become their underlings but certainly Mr. Jagdeo is not in their league.
Persaud was livid and had a published letter in this newspaper in which he attacked my character. Little did I know, he was using me to ingratiate himself with the little mediocre gods that dominate Guyana.
The second incident was when he, Dr. Daniel Kumar, Dr. Kirton and I, had emerged onto Carmichael Street from the Oasis Café. Persaud yelled out, “God, I’m afraid they may know I am an expatriate and try to rob me.” The three of us were amused.
For confirmation of this incident the goodly doctors can be contacted. Both of them are in Guyana at the moment.
That is Randy Persaud for you. Last year, he had an exchange with me over my review of the latest work on imperialism by the genius Giovanni Arrighi. My contention was that Arrighi’s focuses on too much essentialism and that he should concentrate on newer centers of imperialism like China.
Persaud replied, derogating western imperialism and writing a lot of nonsense about the tight control of the American state by the imperialists. It is this same state that produced a Blackman in the White House that the imperialists would have loved to abort.
So much for Persaud’s theorising which, judging from his writings, is extremely poor. We will get a reply to this column from Persaud on how many countries he has traveled and the thousands of scholarly papers he has read and delivered. Talk about the King’s New Clothes.
Poor Randy! He goes back to the country he calls an imperialist territory and whose state machinery is tightly controlled by the imperialist exploiters.
But Randy, unlike the management of the Kaieteur News and the Stabroek News papers he loved to rebuke, as he does this writer, is not serving the interests of the poor Third World by living and working in the Third World. He contributes his labour to the place he calls an imperialist country.
In another column, I will explain why Persaud left his beloved PPP Government. His family went away two weeks ago.
Like Persaud who loves to criticise the western world we conclude this essay with a reply to veterinary doctor, Devon Dublin who wrote that he expects my response to his adoration of Cuba.
I consider it self-insulting in the year 2010 to argue with any other human being about fascism, political tyranny and complete loss of freedom in Cuba. It is not worth one’s time.
This is a country that has never made it into the modern world under Castro. For all his boasts of Cuba’s achievements in medicine, Castro was ashamed to tell his people that he secretly called in a Spanish surgeon to perform the operation on his cancerous prostrate. No Cuban surgeon could have done it.
At least Spanish capitalism has saved Castro’s life.
Let me conclude with the American embargo. The embargo is wrong. It should be removed. So should Castro’s dictatorship too. One of the things people miss is that the removal of the embargo is a choice the American people have to make.
No American president should arrogate to himself the right to abolish the embargo without making it an electoral issue. Let the American people decide.
I hope Dr. Dublin is enjoying modern freedoms in Japan where he says he is at the moment. I hope freedom comes to the Cuba people one day soon.

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