Largest evidence to date we are a 10th rate country

Aug 18, 2009 Freddie Kissoon

In every sphere of life in this country, we see the falling down, the fast rate of social decline, the disappearing human resource index. Out of all of this comes the ubiquity of mediocrity. It affects journalism, higher education, the private sector, the police force, car repair service, technical operations, the heath sector, public sector competence. We just accept we are a mediocre society, and we carry on.

In political circles, the talk is about a third term for Mr. Jagdeo because a certain man said he did a “poll” and it found that Mr. Jagdeo is the most popular politician. No editor, commentator, journalist and opposition politician took the time to question this “pollster” on another strange finding – Dr. Leslie Ramsammy is the most admired cabinet politician – coming at a time when Dr. Ramsammy’s political career is ignominiously crashing to the ground

The mediocrity is all over Guyana when you take into consideration that there was a mountain of facts out there that this “pollster” wasn’t a bone fide intellectual at all. One of the saddest things about mediocrity is that it is infectious. When the intellectual base of a country goes, that country can and will never be a modern society. The intellectual foundation of a society is what drives it.

The lessons from Europe and the US on the priceless role intellectual skills play in driving national development maybe are lost on Guyanese. Are we so bereft of intellectual talent that we cannot use search engines to find data on people, places and events. Don’t we here in Guyana have at least a modicum of intellectual talent that we can research Vishnu Bisram. In print, Mr. Bisham has dozens of self-incriminating statements that by now, we could easily dismiss him as a pseudo pollster

If there is anything Mr. Bisram is good at it is self-destruction. Here are outpourings of self-destruction by Mr. Bisram and we hope no one shames Guyana (except some sections of the Guyana Government that make use of Mr. Bisram’s service) anymore by their embrace of a fake pollster and his invented surveys.

Here is Mr. Bisram in his own self-destructive words in a letter on my analysis of his fictional status dated August 16 in this newspaper. Asked where he works as a teacher Mr. Bisram still cannot answer that but goes back more than thirty years in his life to tell us that he attended the same high school with Khemraj Ramjattan. Here are Mr. Bisram’s own words in answering the question where he teaches at; “I was briefly head prefect at Central High School, Khemraj Ramjatan was my colleague.”

Can one get more comical, absurd and self-destructive than this?

Asked which school he works at, Mr. Bisram replied and told us which school he was a student at. Next Mr. Bisram goes thirty years into the future after he left high school in Guyana and informed us that he has “been teaching high school students since 1984 in New York.” That’s it! No name of any school has been offered.

If I was on television, I would have tried to emulate Rachel Maddow and say, “not even one school you could name, Sir?” That was it for his workplace in New York. For the thousandth time, Mr. Bisram cannot state where he currently works as a school teacher. I got several e-mails the past week that advised me that Mr. Bisram was never a teacher in New York

Let’s move on to more self-destructive acts by Mr. Bisram. In his Sunday letter, he wrote the following about his organization, NACTA, which he claims has been conducting polls over twenty years now and has been doing so the past ten years in Guyana; “NACTA has a long record and common sense dictates if polls are conducted in its name then it exists. “One does not have to be a brain surgeon to figure that one out.” The missing link of course is that for the thousandth time Mr. Bisram cannot tell us where is its address and telephone numbers and who comprise its leadership

Sadly, in his reply to me Mr. Bisram attributes a lot of statements to the late David de Caires. Mr. de Caires cannot defend himself. Here is another self-destructive statement. In his letter Mr. Bisram spoke of the close relationship he had with de Caires but it looks like someone at Stabroek News was onto Mr. Bisram. Let’s quote him; “I conducted another poll, de Caires was ill and permission could not be obtained to publish the findings.” Someone at Stabroek News was smart enough to smell a con.