Vanishing opposition

Mar 07, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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One incident that wasn’t much discussed openly in the media but which highlighted the apoplectic mode of our major opposition parties (PNC and AFC) was the Vishnu Bisram poll controversy. Mr. Bisram subtly set out to hurt the opposition and he was doing it; both PNC and AFC failed to investigate him.

Bisram would turn up in Guyana with a survey, hand it to David de Caires and it gets printed. The country hears that there is frustration with the PPP, but it is still preferred to other parties and Mr. Jagdeo is well liked but not his Ministers.

Things weren’t right here with these findings. They appeared bizarre and a deformed version of reality. Our immobilised, de-energized opposition parties never thought that Bisram might not have been who he said he was and sought to research him. Ministers were doing well, many of them were admired, but in the end Bisram’s “polls” revealed that people despised them but not Mr. Jagdeo.

The PNC and the AFC have thousands (yes, not hundreds but thousands) of Guyanese contacts in New York that could have done a check on Mr. Bisram. Long before Bisram tried to run his game for the PPP, the PNC and AFC could have exposed him. A simple telephone call could have revealed where Mr. Bisram worked and what is the organisation he said employed him to do his surveys.

The PNC and AFC could rest now because Mr. Bisram is gone. It has been established that he is not a teacher in any country of the world, and that there is no organisation in the US by the name of NACTA that commissions Bisram to do polls anywhere in the world. Had Bisram not been researched on, he would have continued to supply his fictional polls to the Stabroek News about the high standing of Mr. Jagdeo.

I was told that the intention was to push for a third term for Mr. Jagdeo citing Bisram’s polls that reveal Jagdeo’s “immense” popularity. There is something I never wrote about before. I spoke with one of the top leaders of the PNC about Bisram and honestly this was the response I got. “Why should the PNC investigate Bisram? Stabroek publishes his polls, let them check on who he is. The PNC ain’t got time for that.”

I replied, “But it is not de Caires that is being hurt by Bisram’s questionable surveys but the PNC.” I got nowhere. The AFC was mad at Bisram’s so-called findings but never checked on him.

This is the state of our opposition. I know an influential guy with substantial contacts with influential US lawmakers. He told me he wrote to opposition figures to supply him with documents on the violations of democracy here but never received a reply. He said many of his e-mails go unanswered.

This is where one has to understand the edge the PPP has. If there was a man who claimed that he was a big pollster in the US but he was not, and he was devastating the PPP with his invented results, the PPP would have got on to his game in quick time. Tracking down Bisram did not involve spending money. There are thousands of Guyanese in New York who would have done it freely for the PNC and the AFC.

These kind of attitudinal failings dampen the spirit of this nation. In Barbados, the opposition has tabled a no-confidence motion against the Prime Minister who is less than a year in power. Just imagine the AFC has called upon the Finance Minister and the Commissioner of Insurance to resign over a scandal the depth of which we are still digging into. But the AFC chose not to ask Mr. Jagdeo to resign when Mr. Jagdeo knew that legally there was no First Lady in this land because he, Jagdeo, was not legally married.

In the Caribbean islands, the opposition would not have gone back into Parliament after that deception.

The AFC is yet to hold a picket exercise, stage a march, organise a street demonstration or organise a vigil in protest against the dirtiness that has resided in many policies the Government of Guyana has enacted.

The PNC had a retreat at Splashmin’s. Professor Clive Thomas was there as a consultant. This is the same Thomas that just five months ago forcefully praised President Jagdeo for consulting Guyanese on the EPA. No such consultation in my view took place.

So sad that, at a time when one disaster after another befalls this nation, the lonely eyes of the people of Guyana look to the skies in desperate hope for a future

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