Freddie Kissoon column – Ravi Dev, the IAC and facts (not truths)

Jun 23, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I like the Stabroek News’ reply to President Jagdeo on his (or his Government’s) decision to withdraw state-paid advertisements from that newspaper.

The President’s position is that the truth about the newspaper business is that Stabroek News had lost circulation; therefore, Government had to put its notices in media houses that reached more people. The Stabroek News wasn’t interested in that truth. They were concerned with the fact of newspaper circulation.

So the paper called for an audit of sales of the Chronicle. The Office of the President backed down. It had to. Facts would have revealed that if the President’s position was tenable and appreciative, then the Chronicle could not have been given one cent of public money.

The Chronicle does not reach even a meager percentage of the Guyanese population. I am contending that, at the moment, the new kid — the Guyana Times — sells more copies than the Chronicle.

Sadly, we are witnessing the death of a long-established tradition – the Chronicle. It didn’t die under the PNC’s rule, but under the PPP’s. Talk about the Midas touch in reverse.

We have some other truths that are like sand castles that little children build on the beach; once you poke them with your finger, they tumble down. There is Ravi Dev’s truth about the major races in Guyana voting along ethnic lines for the PNC and the PPP, because they feel insecure and see those two parties as protecting their interests.

Dev has gone silent. His silence has not gone unnoticed by the newspaper readership. Mr. Dev cannot intellectually explain to us if the endemic ethnic insecurity complex pushes people to vote race, why Africans balloted for the Alliance For Change (AFC) in 2006, giving that party six seats.

Mr. Dev’s truth has been supplanted by electoral facts. When you examine GECOM’s breakdown of the Xs by the thousands of polling places, it reveals that the AFC did badly in all districts with East Indian majority. In Ramjattan’s own East Berbice village he was rejected.

Those of us who believe that the authoritarian abuse of power has continued from where Burnham left off need to persist in writing, so our opinions can countervail those of people like Dev and others.

Had we not been writing, then David Dabydeen and Rickey Singh would have continued to paint an elegant picture of PPP’s democracy. Had we not been writing, then Drs. Walter and Randy Persaud would have shown us how free we are in Guyana under the PPP.

Dr. Randy Persaud wrote last month that the PPP has not achieved hegemony over the society because “mo fyaah/slow fyaah” (his words) is in the way. This is how he put it: “The extant leadership (the PPP) must struggle for its survival” (“The problem with the PPP is not one of hegemony,” SN, May 4, 08).

Persaud was asked to describe the forms this struggle for survival takes against the background of the PPP’s domination of Parliament; frequent violations of the Constitution; reshuffle in the army, with the bypassing of four senior officers; charges against Oliver Hinckson and denial of bail to him; bypassing of Ingrid Griffith at the GRA; control over the University; denial of agency shop dues to the Public Service Union; withdrawal of subsidy for Critchlow Labour College; unconstitutional prolongation of the Ethnic Relations Commission etc.

Persaud, like Ravi Dev, has gone silent. And for one reason — the facts were presented to prove him wrong. It is necessary to give the facts and leave truths to those who reside in the corridors of power.

Now we have the Indian Arrival Committee (IAC) taking objection to a Stabroek News cartoon, exclaiming that it paints East Indians in racist tones. According to the IAC, the truth is that Guyana is not a racially driven society. Two facts should be given to the public as a rebuttal to the IAC.

One is: if we are not a racially conscious society, then how do you explain the results of the last election? The facts on the way East Indians voted are on a GECOM document which gives a statistical outline of every polling station. The East Indian population voted for the PPP.

The second fact may be more important, because when you know it then you tend to dismiss the type of organization like the IAC. It is a PPP front founded by high-ranking members of the PPP. But, alarmingly, the existence of the IAC reminds us of paramountcy of the party under the PNC.

The IAC is fitted out with public money, just like a particular guy who sits in an office in southern Georgetown doing exclusive PPP work and is being paid by the Government of Guyana. Which is worse, the Stabroek News cartoon or paramouncy of the party? 

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