David is dead and Freddie acting a little funny in the head

Nov 06, 2008 Peeping Tom

For some time, Freddie has been using his column to vent his personal frustrations. It is well known that Freddie was not too pleased with the reappointment of the Vice Chancellor of the University of Guyana, nor the manner in which this appointment was made.
He thought that he was having things his way with the appointment process when suddenly there was some high level intervention that shattered his hopes. Freddie hit the roof, made an emotional speech at Council which he saw as one of the great oratorical deliveries in history, deluded himself into believing that this singular act was historic, went into the National Park and was almost tempted to tell Ronald Waddell that he, Freddie, had fought for his country the previous night before.
He had a point about the abuse of process, but he over-exaggerated the importance of his speech by believing that he was fighting for his country.
Freddie must learn to live with his ego, his pride and his luck. He must learn to accept that there are some things in life he cannot change because he is no position to press for such change. The problem with Freddie, as has been with so many columnists, is that he overrates himself. He writes a daily column in the Kaieteur News. This allows him to influence public opinion, but it does not mean that he has any influence at all on the real powers.
The powerbrokers have no time for Freddie. To them he is just an irritant. This is something that Freddie has to understand; he can hardly change the present much less tomorrow. In short, he is just an ordinary mortal lucky to write for a newspaper.
Once he understands this, he will gain a greater appreciation of his place within society and he will become less frustrated, and at the minimum, end his East Indian bashing.
For months now he has been projecting the bitterness he harbours towards the PPP onto the East Indian community. This community has so far been very silent at the literary assaults that he has made, no doubt because its members are aware that Freddie is someone who can overnight change his opinion and do a 180 degrees somersault.
This column itself has exercised a great deal of patience with him but in recent days a few screws seemed to have gone loose in his head. On Diwali Day he did a most inexcusable thing, using his column of that day to carry out a scathing attack on Hindus. Then only two days ago, he continued with a recurrent theme of his: blaming East Indians for their voting patterns and the support they have given to the PPP. I want this University professor to understand because I am sure he is more than capable of understanding that ethnic voting is not restricted to East Indians in Guyana.
I want him to recall that in the run up to the 1992 elections, he predicted that in light of the destructive rule of the PNC, a destruction that he likened to that of Hurricane Gilbert, that the PNC would not gain 10 per cent of the popular vote.
He knows the result of those elections which gave the PNC over 44 per cent of the votes, a situation that was repeated in 1997 and 2001. Freddie knows all too well that it is the ethnic security dilemmas that are responsible for the predominant voting patterns in Guyana. He accepted this theory all along, including this year. But no sooner had he got into one of his typical petty squabbles with Ravi Dev than he disowned the theory.
His pet peeve these days is to blame the East Indians for supporting the PPP, and the only problem he has with the PPP is it did some wrong things at the place where he works. His grievance is personal.
Yet this is a man who says that the government is not democratic. He says this, yet by his own writings, he is failing to respect the choice of East Indians in voting for the PPP. I am sure he also does not like the PNCR but I do not hear him assailing any other group for supporting the PNC.
We must forgive Freddie for what he is doing though. You see deep down he pretends to be courageous, but he is as frightened as a cornered rat. He is afraid of the PPP harming him and therefore he knows that his only protection lies in him gaining the support of those who oppose the PPP. This is why he is behaving funny, because he is running scared.
The PNC supporters, however, are not going to be easily fooled. They know Freddie too, and they know that if tomorrow the PPP does things that are pleasing to Freddie, then he will just as sudden jump on the PPP bandwagon as he is now trying to get on their’s.

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David is dead and Freddie acting a little funny in the head

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