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My wife likes Harry

Sep 10, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

All of us have our favourite first names. I guess it originates from some past connection. My wife likes “Harry.” That was my father’s forename. For some strange reason, one of the movies my wife likes tremendously is “Harry in your pocket.”

I don’t know if there is some Freudian connection to my dad but she really likes that movie. It is an early 70s film starring James Coburn as Harry, a master pick-pocket thief.

When I worked with the Grenada Government of Maurice Bishop, we met one of the nicest Englishmen you could ever meet in the Third World. He lived next to us in an apartment complex. His name was Harry.

Because of my father and my wife’s love of that pronunciation, I do fancy the name Harry. There is something about that appellation that reminds you of the nice, lighter, enjoyable side of life.

Unfortunately, of late I have distanced myself from the brand. And this is because Harry Hergash has left a bad feeling about the name.

Harry Hergash is a Guyanese who functions in a group in Canada named the Canada-Guyana Forum. It is similar to the Canadian front group for the PPP in Toronto founded by the late ‘Sash’ Sawh, the Association of Concerned Guyanese. Harry chose to pick on me for what he terms incorrect analysis at times in my Kaieteur News page.

I became suspicious of Harry’s political inclinations because he would write letters, quite often, to the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News about Freddie Kissoon’s opinions and how misguided some of them are.

But never a word, muchless a line, on the deepening of elected dictatorship in Guyana with forms of power abuse and administrative incompetence that are worse than when Forbes Burnham ruled Guyana.

Harry even wrote a letter published only in the Chronicle which I didn’t know about and was only brought to my attention when I replied to him.

Harry wanted the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) to investigate me for what I had written in an article titled, “Pavlovian Respondents.” Harry was annoyed because I opined that East Indians are foolish to keep voting for the PPP.

He found that insulting to the East Indians of Guyana and so he called for an ERC inquiry (which was rightly ignored by 100 percent of the population living here). So I guess I cannot use the word “foolish” at all. The least said of that the better.

I don’t have to be suspicious of Harry any longer. I now know where his political interests are situated. Like another overseas-based Guyanese, Dr. Randy Persaud, he has declared his sympathies for the Jagdeo Government.

Dr. Persaud is still to describe for his readers the positive achievements of the Guyana Government out of which he offered his political support to Mr. Jagdeo. Dr. Persaud says that the PPP can stand on its record of achievements. We are all waiting anxiously for Persaud’s evaluation of that record.

In a correspondence to this newspaper published last Monday, Harry thinks after his presidency is over, Mr. Jagdeo will be credited by the historians with many achievements. This was the exact word Dr. Persaud used. Both Harry and Randy are not going further to tell us about these “achievements.”

Of course I could name two successes right away. The President expanded the Georgetown Hospital and built more schools. But Harry and Randy should know that if CN Sharma was President, the IDB would have given him money for the hospital and for school expansion.

One hopes when Harry and Randy decide to honour their moral obligation to the readers of the newspaper that publishes their constant letters and tell us about these “achievements” they would be scholarly enough to look at fundamental policies and not who built roads and bridges.

Harry goes further than Randy. Harry does not like what President Jagdeo did – refused to sign twelve Bills that Parliament passed. Harry wrote that this undemocratic act of President Jagdeo “will be a distraction on his record.”

Harry ended his letter with those words that I quoted. What Harry did not go on to say – either because he cannot see it or doesn’t want to see it – is the nature of dictatorship in Guyana.

In which country, in which century, does a ruling party pass twelve pieces of legislation and its own Prime Minister or President refuses to approve not one or two but all of them? Surely Harry has to know that this is the theatre of one-man oligarchy.

Is there a party in Guyana that forms the government in Guyana? What is the role of that governing party in the formulation of policies for the country? Harry needs to see the movie “Harry in your pocket.”

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