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Perry Mars’s murder; I’m ashamed to be Guyanese

May 11, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

One of the nicest professors I ever had in all of the three universities I attended was Dr. Perry Mars. I never called him Dr. Mars because we were like political comrades so I called him Perry. He taught me Pol: 100, the course in political philosophy in my last year as a UG student.
I became a lecturer at UG years later and taught that very course. From the time of my freshman moments at UG until his death on Thursday, we remained good friends
Perry Mars was one of the nicest Guyanese I ever met. If I were to speak as an Indian, I would say he is one of the most decent, multi-racial, African-Guyanese I have ever met. This will not be a free-flowing column because I will not pen it with calm emotions. It is the manner of his death that has devastated me. A man that was one of the best social science thinkers this country has produced had to die in a home invasion – robbed and murdered. It is not right. This cannot be right. This cannot be happening to Guyana.
I would like to share with readers one incident that shows the type of human Perry Mars was. He was giving me a ride from UG and made a stop at Stella Maris School in Woolford Avenue to pick up his son. His son crossed the road towards the car and this cyclist rode into the little boy and knocked him onto the roadway. Perry came out of the car and in a quiet tone, gently admonished the rider. I know this could not have been me if that had happened to my daughter. I know this could not have been most people in the world if that had happened to their child. But such was the nature of the man.
I will always embrace the appreciation Perry had of me at a time at UG when I was seen as too radical. He never treated me as a student but as a political buddy. Perry was quintessentially a Jaganite. For some esoteric reason he was a deep admirer and supporter of Cheddi Jagan. I was a deep supporter of the Working People’s Alliance but it never brought any uneasiness in our friendship.
He wanted to see me develop intellectually and through his initiative, I was the only student invited to a weekly rap session among lecturers at the home of Yvonne Benn, sociology lecturer at her David Street home in Kitty.
I remember the first session I attended, Rupert Roopnaraine gave a stirring analysis of a worrying trend in Cuba with the removal of the film institute and its placement in the Ministry of Culture. At one of those sessions, Perry offered a trenchant critique of a booklet on cooperative socialism by Dr. Henry Jeffrey. Jeffrey at the time was the Principal of Kuru Kuru College.
Perry argued, using statistics, that Guyana’s economy was more of state capitalism than cooperative socialism. He showed where the role of the cooperatives was less than five percent of the economy and went on to argue that it was just a slogan Burnham found useful.
I went away to study and came back to join the staff at UG. By then he had migrated but his work on Caribbean politics remained instrumental through his publications. Perry was a strange man; good-looking, bright and decent but he was just not a social mixer. He just didn’t want to be part of the middle class crowd. And I suspected that was the reason I became close to him. He didn’t alienate me with the trappings of a middle class intellectual. After the PPP came to power, I thought his name would feature prominently because President Jagan respected him immensely. But he was never one to push himself forward.
I never knew he was back in Guyana until I met him at the check-out counter at Survival Supermarket. The first thing he said to me; “I’m reading you; you haven’t changed.” It was really great to see him again and I told him that. He said that he comes often to Guyana and stayed at the very house he owned since in the seventies. This is the house he was murdered in.
I wish I could say so much more about a great Guyanese that I have so much respect and love for. I will bow my head in silence at the church service and at the burial site and I will do so in the feeling of being ashamed of what my country has become.

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