Polls and Angst

Aug 23, 2009 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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I am sure the Guyanese newspaper-reading public is as exhausted as I am with the extended colloquy between Mr Freddie Kissoon and Mr Vishnu Bisram on the latter’s polls. I was more than a little bemused, therefore, when Mr Kissoon decided to “call my name” in his latest fulmination against his bête noir.
Evidently, in one of my past letters to the press on another (exhausting) topic that engaged Mr Kissoon, I had made a passing facetious comment that perhaps he could have Bisram conduct a poll on one of his assertions for free, since like so many Indians in NY, Bisram had made oodles of money in real estate there.
Mr. Kissoon now jumps from “made money from real estate” to declaring that I had supplied the smoking gun that he had been seeking for years on Bisram: to wit, Bisram’s “occupation”! And not only Bisram’s occupation, but also mine – it seems that I, along with Bisram “worked” in the real estate industry in NY.
Now lest I be accused of implying that Mr. Kissoon is voyeuristically fascinated with Mr. Bisram’s private life, he evidently believes Mr. Bisram’s polls lose credibility because, among other apparent transgressions, Bisram will not publicly declare at exactly which Public School in New York he teaches. Mr. Kissoon calls on me to “fess up” on Bisram.
I pen this article not necessarily to put some closure on Mr. Kissoon’s obsessive denigration of Mr Bisram’s efforts at polling but because I believe that polling must become part of our political culture. This is not the first time Mr Kissoon has attacked polling endeavours and I will quote extensively from my prior intervention because it recapitulates Mr Kissoon’s modus operandi in attacking pollsters when their findings do not fit his preconceived notions.
“A week ago, (5-25-08) in the pursuit of his vendetta against Mr Bisram and the latter’s polling efforts, Mr Kissoon referred to the Turkeyen Research and Polling Institute (TRPI) as, “one of Ravi Dev’s front groups that quickly dissipated.” Now Mr Kissoon is quite aware of the history and personnel of TRPI because he had directed his bile against that entity before – noticeably in 1991 when it issued the results of a national poll that measured voters’ preferences in Guyana at that time…
While here between 1988-1992, Mr Ramharack was concerned that politicians were making decisions without any reference to polls that measured the opinions of the electorate. He conducted quite a number of structured surveys in communities across Guyana and in the process not only arrived at a formidable grasp of political preferences here but built a detailed database of respondents and communities based on the 1980 census.
But it was the result of the 1991 poll that earned Mr Kissoon’s ire, for which he evidently has never forgiven Mr Ramharack. The poll predicted that the PPP would win the 1992 elections handily and that the PNC would remain decisively as the second largest party in Guyana…More to the point that concerned Mr Kissoon, the poll predicted that the WPA, which he supported, would obtain a mere 4% of the votes. Mr Kissoon was livid.
After railing at the “two-man polling team” (whose address he could not find) that could produce such “extremely surprising results” in a December 1991 article, Mr Kissoon announced what he believed was the better evaluation. Basing his projections solely on speculations about the influence of race, the youth factor, new Indian leaders, crowd attendance etc. he declared conclusively: “I would put the PNC a considerable distance behind the WPA…Frankly I believe it to be around 10 to 12 percent.” And this is the mindset that Mr Kissoon has betrayed in most of his public pronouncements – a willingness to trust his speculations ahead of what others predict on the basis of solid polling data. And rather than rethink his assumptions based on the message of the data, he spends his time attacking the messengers.”
Whatever problems Mr. Kissoon may have about Mr. Bisram’s polls, he ought not to be influenced by Mr Bisram’s place of employment; possible methodology weaknesses and the degree of the accuracy of the findings are more germane. Re the TRPI poll, I had pointed out, “Before the poll was published in 1991, Mr David de Caires had insisted on a detailed report on the methodology and personnel used…” When Mr de Caires later published Bisram’s polls, I do not believe that he would have compromised his standards. In 2001, many in ROAR were very upset when Bisram’s polls predicted very low single-digits votes for us but he was vindicated after the results came in.
For what it is worth, back in the eighties when I was in NY, I once visited Bisram at the public school where he was teaching. When the political group of which I was a part then met Bisram, he was part of another political grouping that included fellow teachers Baytoram Ramharack and Vassan Ramracha. They had all graduated from City College and were doing graduate studies at the CUNY Graduate Centre on 42nd Street. As one from the world of business (Director of Sales Administration at a corporation at nearby 40th and Broadway, Mr.Kissoon, I never “worked” in real estate) I was impressed by individuals who had chosen to study political science as a discipline: unlike those like myself who stuck to the traditional beaten path of business, law or medicine.
After I became more closely associated with them, I was educated on the importance of two things in politics: polling, and the need to infuse analyses of the observed social phenomena with rigorous theory. I know that Bisram has several (yes, several) Masters Degrees which, with his credits in Education and 22 years of service would place him in the highest paid category for public school teachers.
Oh! On the matter of “making money in real estate”. This was the preferred investment route (rather than, say, the stock market) for Indians in the 80’s in first Richmond Hill and then Jamaica. While the white owners saw the neighbourhoods “collapsing” because of white flight to the suburbs and the influx of foreign “coloureds”, many like Bisram and myself saw the potential created since these newcomers were imbued with the middle-class “house-proud” values. One could purchase properties with minimal down payments and service the owner-held mortgages and improve the property with the rental incomes, and then sell at huge profits in a few years. One could also “flip” properties. It just demanded the willingness to take risks.
Ramharack and Bisram are Guyanese who have pioneered polling in their native land; they ought to be praised not pilloried – especially since they did so with mostly their own funds. Whatever shortcomings their works may have, no foundations with addresses and telephones have stepped up to do better.

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