Razzmatazz, rameseum, rauwolfia, and ravelment

Sep 22, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

The ravelment of Ravi Dev was plain to see in his column yesterday. It is yet another article on Frederick Kissoon in which Dev continues with his theoretical razzmatazz, to confuse Guyanese about a myth named the Indian security dilemma.

Next, he introduces political rauwolfia of the worst kind when he insinuates that my columns have become dangerous at a time when violent gunmen are attacking the state. He goes on to build a rameseum to the East Indian population, which he started when he wrote, a few years back, that if East Indians didn’t come to Guyana, the territory would have remained a mangrove swamp. He told us yesterday what the East Indians have achieved in ‘Little Berbice’ in New York — the mangrove swamp story again.

Let us describe the ravelment of this failed politician. One – his razzmatazz: He is seeking to prolong his so-called Indian base by carping on Freddie Kissoon’s bashing of East Indians for the way they voted. In this way, he hopes to confuse Indians about my politics.

One of the fantastic things about life is the permanence of the written word. Countless numbers of Guyanese in and out of the country have access to my analyses of the Buxton conspiracy, in which I denounced it as a violent movement against East Indians. I did more than 25 articles on the post-2002 violence that emanated from Buxton. The research almost cost me my life.

My home was shot up and a bullet missed my wife by two inches. I am sure Dev knows about that, because I wrote about it on more than one occasion.  My Buxton analysis also earned me a daily cussing out by Channel 9 talk-show hosts and constant anti-Kissoon ranting by Tacuma Ogunseye.

They didn’t cuss out Ravi Dev, but Freddie Kissoon. I must have been doing something good for Indians for them to spew their hatred on me. On the positive side, Dev can read what Eusi Kwayana wrote about my Buxton research in his book, “The Morning After.”

“It was Freddie Kissoon, a Guyanese Indian, that exposed the anti-East Indian poison in Kean Gibson’s book, “The Cycle of Racial Oppression in Guyana.” My writings against violent attacks on Indians from the Mash Day escapees exist in black and white. Dev and his friends in ‘Little Berbice’ can easily access them. His razzmatazz has failed, because these writings of mine have had widespread dissemination, given that we now have the Internet.

Two – his political rauwolfia: Here is a man that has ignored all the cruel policies of the PPP regime, many of which have alienated other ethnic constituencies in this country, but Dev can find time to argue that the contents of some of my columns can incite violence against the state by roaming gunmen. The nastiness of this stratagem is that Dev could have incited violence against me with his claim. Testimony of this relentless rauwolfia is his blatant refusal to name the essays in question and his explicit distorting of my comparison between the PNC Government under Burnham and the PPP regime under Jagdeo. My adumbration is that I see forms of authoritarian excesses in the Jagdeo Administration that I did not see under Burnham. It is semantic asininity to define that interpretation as the Jagdeo Government being worse that the Burnham cabal.

Three –more razzmatazz: The Indian ethnic security dilemma (IESD) is a theoretical fraud. There is no such viable concept. The IESD posits (Dev is quite lucid on this stuck record) that Indians live with a security dilemma because, under an overtly Indian Government, the security forces are made up of African-Guyanese who have loyalty to their African party. Therefore, the PPP cannot guarantee itself in power and offer protection to its constituencies. The refutation of this intellectual deception can fill volumes. The rejection of it comes easily when one looks at how the PPP has been able to stay in power for sixteen years.

Finally – his rameseum. We need not return to his mangrove swamp pronouncement. Yesterday, he wrote that Indians made it big in ‘Little Berbice’ in New York. I have no doubt that many Indians worked hard and elevated themselves in Richmond Hill.

Among those ‘Little Berbicians’ are immigrants who ran from Guyana because the PPP was a non-existent opposition. Now, they enjoy American democracy and support elected dictatorship in Guyana.

The PPP did nothing for them when they were in Guyana. They see democracy at work in the US, but they are comfortable in supporting a Guyanese President that is happy with Guyana having one radio station only. Such people are not only fools, but the tragedy is that they contribute to the prolongation of dictatorship in Guyana.

---

---