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Jun 24, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In another forum, I penned an essay as a response to a letter in both independent dailies titled, “People should speak out against the wrong doings they witness…” signed by Mr. Vidyaratha Kissoon (no relation) and Ms. Sherlina Nageer.
In my opinion piece, I said I have been around a long time and have never heard the name Sherlina Nageer, meaning that she surely wasn’t a person speaking out. And Kissoon can hardly meet the test of a person frequently speaking out.
Kissoon and Nageer wanted the Guyanese people to talk up after they were the recipient of an injustice. The point in my article was that if Kissoon and Nageer had found their collective voice earlier, Guyana may have been spared some elements of fascism that presently characterize the exercise of power.
Since their missive (May 14, 2011), Kissoon and Nageer have migrated to the cocoon of reticence, because we haven’t heard from them since. Oops! Sorry! Kissoon did write a letter asking for alcohol to be banned from “Feminition.” He forgot to mention the asininity and hypocrisy of “Feminition” in which men who abused (and even killed) their female partners were prominently present at the absurd show at the National Stadium.
Now we have another letter. It is written by Mr. Rafiq Khan Jr. in yesterday’s Stabroek News. He is an attorney that works in the law firm headed by one of the PPP leaders, Mr. Ralph Ramkarran. He has lived in Guyana since we were both students at UG in the seventies.
Let’s quote the man himself; “For a number of years, much to the chagrin of many of my friends and relatives, I always maintained an optimistic attitude about prospects in Guyana…coping with life in Guyana has never been an easy task and the years have began to take their toll …my experience (has) brought me to the conclusion – Guyana is incapable of development.”
The average reader of all the newspapers in Guyana would not know the name Rafiq Khan. Is it an incontrovertible fact that Mr. Khan has not made any controversial statement in public for all the decades he has lived in Guyana.
If I know him, I would say he is an unassuming man who goes about his personal business without being in the nation’s eye. Now, all of a sudden, Mr. Khan has made a vitriolic statement – “Guyana is incapable of development.” He worked with Mr. Ralph Ramkarran throughout the 19 years of PPP’s hegemony in this land, so one would like to know why this epiphany came about now.
Mr. Khan has described for us why he received his revelation. It is all in his letter. Please read it. He got a horrible time at the Guyana Revenue Authority when he applied for his road vehicle licence and TIN for his two children. Is it safe to ask that if there was no encounter with the GRA’s arrogance would we have heard from Khan?
If Kissoon and Nageer were not mistreated as they claimed, would we have seen that screaming headline from these two persons? It is not safe again to say that the answer to the question is in the negative.
Because, for all the horrible manifestations that have made the Jagdeo regime a more atrocious dictatorship than Burnham’s, we have never heard or seen a complaint from these three folks.
Mr. Khan is a lawyer. Look at the state of the rule of law in Guyana. Does Mr. Khan have a position on the statement made by the chief law officer in Guyana, the Attorney-General, who told the press that he is a man given to doing illegal things?
No doubt Khan’s complaints will reach the ear of Khurshid Sattaur and some changes will be made. Khan ought to know that had he followed the hundreds of his fellow citizens who have written about the behaviour at the GRA, changes would have long come.
In closing, I appeal to Khan, Kissoon and Nageer to join many of us, social activists, to do something about the destruction of teenagers for just having a marijuana cigarette. I am not optimistic! Period!

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