Ravi Dev replies to Freddie Kissoon

Jun 25, 2008 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
For a person who has been teaching at a university for some 20 years, Mr. Fredrick Kissoon’s outpourings have of recent become more redolent of semantic slackness.

The caption of one of his recent outings, “Ravi Dev, the IAC and facts (not truths)”, signalled that he was going to distinguish between “facts and truths” peddled by, among others, myself.

He caught my interest. Enlightenment, after all, can emanate from the unlikeliest sources. Mr. Kissoon intoned: “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.” But I was flummoxed by Mr. Kissoon’s use of the word “truth”.

Even though caricaturised, Mr. Kissoon was referring to my proffered hypothesis that voting in Guyana is driven by the Ethnic Security Dilemmas of the major groups.

As a social scientist, with a Masters degree from a Canadian university (in Guyanese History?) he would know that a hypothesis is an explanation for observed facts. It is not, and can never be referred to as a “truth”.

It may be elevated to the status of a “theory,” and even a “law” if over the course of time it still explains the observed data, but it is always accepted that new data may possibly cause it to be rejected. So, Professor Kissoon, let us not confuse matters by throwing in words like “truths”.

What Mr. Kissoon is contending is that my hypothesis on the voting behaviour of African Guyanese has been undermined by the observation (actually inferred from voting statistics, but with which I agree) that in the 2006 elections, the AFC received most of its votes from African Guyanese.

Mr. Kissoon claims that I am now “silent” about this anomaly, because I “cannot intellectually explain” its occurrence. However, in my column, Fears and Reactions, of May 11th, I wrote:
“The African vote for the AFC has more to do with their dissatisfaction with the leadership of Mr. Corbin from a particular stratum of the African community than a rejection of the thesis of African marginalisation from the Executive branch of government.”

I repeated this assertion on June 1st in my “Voting in Guyana”. I guess one has to write a letter every day to or on Mr. Kissoon so as not to be “silent”.

Now Mr. Kissoon is free to offer another explanation or hypothesis for the observation, which he has done – that Africans, unlike Indians, are more inclined not to vote ‘racially” – but that is all it is, an alternative explanation. A properly designed and conducted poll could possibly determine whether his or my hypothesis is correct.

I suggested that he could possibly request Mr. Bisram to perform this test, but evidently the suggestion has not found favour with Mr. Kissoon, and he has resorted to his old tactic of misrepresentation – here conflating “facts” with explanations or hypotheses on those facts.

But, possibly anticipating Mr. Kissoon’s rejection of polling, I had hazarded a real-life test of my hypothesis on the AFC vote: “It would be interesting to see if the AFC will receive the same percentage of African votes in the next elections when, if my understanding of their alternating leadership structure is correct, Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan will be the Presidential candidate.

Leadership of the political party in divided polities is a crucial variable for mobilizing support, since so much symbolic significance is invested in the top position”. Predictability is an accepted test of theories – the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so to speak. We’ll see in 2011.

Mr. Kissoon is so bitter about the PPP’s excesses that he passes on the sins of the leaders onto their followers. I commend to him the observation of Elder Eusi Kwayana, that he was wrong to have also done so between 1961 and 1968. People make their own history — but of circumstances not of their making.

Let us not summarily reject that a fear of being dominated by each other may unfortunately be part of our circumstances – or we could end up solidifying those circumstances.
Ravi Dev