I thank Harry Hergash for two reasons

Jan 13, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Mr. Harry Hergash, a Guyanese who long migrated to Canada (which is unfortunate for those of his kind because had he stayed, he would have seen how ineffective the PPP was as an opposition party) and who belongs to an organisation named Canada-Guyana Forum, takes umbrage quite often at my constant criticism of the PPP Government.
In a recent letter to the press, he implies that my condemnatory outlook has as its basis the bitterness people like me feel against the PPP because we weren’t rewarded with office after 1992 but instead the PPP came to dominate.
I thank Mr. Hergash for his letter for two reasons. It is extremely positive, (and the emphasis is on the adverb, “extremely”) when a Guyanese has the courage to discuss any angle of political development in Guyana using his or her own identity. I don’t care how sycophantic is their embrace of the PPP or how severe their castigations of the PPP’s critics are, such persons should be accorded respect because they are not moral cowards or immoral escapists who hide behind a false name.
Secondly, I appreciate the fact that Mr. Hergash reads my KN articles. There is a problem however, with Mr. Hergash’s interest in my columns. My advice to him here is sincere and I hope he takes it with that understanding.
I am not the only opinion-maker in or outside of Guyana that takes a strong stance against wrong-doing by the Jagdeo presidency and the PPP Government. Harry seems to think so. He constantly reflects on my criticism of the government and subtly questions my judgement.
Mr. Hergash must understand this and if he does not he will continue to mistakenly see me as the only crusader against terrible governance in Guyana. I take this occasion to point Mr. Hargash in some other useful directions. We can start with Professor Clive Thomas. No doubt Harry has to know him. He is one of Guyana’s leading names and one of the top economists in the region and has been so a long time now.
Professor Thomas enunciated a theory of the PPP Government in 2002, and since that time has refined his approach as late as mid-2008. It is an interesting model for understanding the Jagdeo presidency and comes within the tradition of superb theorizing. The professor posits a working relationship between very powerful political elites ensconced in the power establishment and the criminal world that is centered on drug trafficking and money laundering.
To put it another way, Dr. Thomas is contending that there is an overlapping canopy between rulers and criminals in Guyana. He refers to Guyana as “The criminalized state.”
Never before has a renowned Caribbean scholar indicted a government the way Professor Thomas has done. I hope Mr. Hergash reads about Dr. Thomas theorizing on the state of political degeneracy in this land but more importantly if and when he does so, I hope he gets the name right.
The theory of the criminalized state was not written by Frederick Kissoon, though Mr. Hergash would have wished it to be so. Next is Rickey Singh, the Guyanese journalist who ran away from Mr. Burnham’s rule to Barbados, and who has been supporting the PPP Government since 1992 but chose not to return to his homeland.
Mr. Singh did a devastatingly critical column on the Jagdeo presidency that first appeared in a Trinidad newspaper in the third quarter of 2008.
He refers to Mr. Jagdeo’s style as the maximum leader syndrome. This was an amazing turn-around for Singh. They say better late than never. Mr. Singh waited a long time before he saw the light. I am sure Harry Hergash knows the implications of a government being possessed of the maximum leader syndrome. It simply means the country is run by a powerful figure that concentrates power for himself and relegates other decision-makers to the underling basket.
This is dictatorship, Harry. When you read what Singh wrote I hope you do not confuse the names and think it was Frederick Kissoon who penned that opinion.
Finally, Harry, you know the name David Dabydeen. He is one of Guyana’s leading scholars, who like Singh, is an avid supporter of the PPP. In an interview with the Stabroek News, he referred to Mr. Jagdeo’s withdrawal of state advertisements from the Stabroek News as idiotic. As you read that interview, Mr. Hergash, make sure you remember that the interviewee’s signature is David Dabydeen not Frederick Kissoon.
So Harry, I hope I was able to finally open up your eyes and make you see that Frederick Kissoon is not the only caustic evaluator of elected dictatorship in Guyana.

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I thank Harry Hergash for two reasons

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