Silhouettes of ephemeral shadows in 2008

Jan 07, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Our political culture last year showed not even an infinitesimal sign of going beyond the limitation of racial motivation and bigoted support across the political divide. It has been a de-motivating year for me as a political analyst, but in this country every moment is a learning experience.
I was deeply disappointed in the political mentality of Ravi Dev. I could never reclaim the respect and admiration I once had for this gentleman. In the end, he faded away like so many others who came before proclaiming solutions to Guyana’s intractable political dilemmas but ended up being part of the problem.
It was a disappointment but not unexpected when Dev came dangerously close to invoking circumstances that could have led to me being harmed last year. For this I will not forgive him. Dev in several columns of his and in letters to the newspapers opined that some of my KN columns had become dangerous at a time when violent gunmen were attacking the state. He was simply saying that what I write could have emboldened the violent gunmen. He could have emboldened state plotters to harm me.
What was obnoxious in Dev’s anti-Kissoon ranting was that he deliberately obfuscated, in his condemnation of my KN corner, the role of state actors themselves and the unkind policies and hate-filled statements they made throughout 2008.
I asked Dev to cite my essays that were deleterious to stability. He could not answer. On the other hand, I was quite willing to provide him with evidence of governmental insensitivities that could have jeopardized social tranquility. What about the decision at the GRA and CANU to replace high-ranking officials of one type of cultural community with members of another?
I was not in the least interested in what Mrs. Jagan wrote about me last year in her Mirror column, referring to me and David Hinds as hate writers. What can any democratic Guyanese say about such expected insults from Mrs. Jagan? She is viewed in negative terms by most young people who have watched her party dissolve the hopes of this nation.
The most one could have done, as a reaction to Mrs. Jagan’s miasmic outpourings, was to inform the young population of this country that David and I gave all our youth to the creation of circumstances that have led to the freedom of Mrs. Jagan and the mini-dictators in her party that have wiped out the gains thousands and thousands of Guyanese struggled for in the seventies and eighties.
There are 52 weeks in a year and almost double that number of letters on me appeared in the Chronicle last year, signed by people who lack even a modicum of decency to write in their own names. Those letters attacked my personal life, my educational competence, my political beliefs and everything else about me. This was coming from a paper whose ultimate head was the Minister of Information, President Jagdeo.
This was the same person who called me a sleaze ball but still can’t find it appropriate to assign the same label to the people who run the Chronicle. The Chronicle’s letter section remains a huge source of amusement for countless numbers in this land.
Who takes the letter section of the Chronicle seriously? Not even Mrs. Jagan and Mr. Jagdeo.
I was quite elated at how 2008 turned out after I saw the Stabroek News consign Vishnu Bisram to its letter pages rather than according him the usual big space on his fictional polls. I spent a lot of energy in 2008 trying to expose Bisram because I felt he could have influenced young minds who believed his polls were genuine.
I hope I was able to prove to the readership of this nation that there is no such entity that does polls in the US by the name of NACTA, that Mr. Bisram is not a full-time teacher at any public or private school in New York, and that his is not commissioned by any group in or out of Guyana, the Caribbean and the US in the past or at the moment to conduct professional surveys.
On a related issue, 2008 was also gratifying for me because many of us were able to stop the Walter Persauds, Randy Persauds, Errol Arthurs, Harry Hergashs and others of their ilk from spreading propaganda about how good is the PPP’s record on governance. Had there been no replies to these people, they would have continued to parade their shameless support for the PPP Government, the worst of which was Dr. Randy Persaud’s cry that the PPP cannot govern because of “mo fyaah.”
Was there a bigger absurdity last year?

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Silhouettes of ephemeral shadows in 2008

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