Pulling out your pools

Sep 21, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Every day there is an issue with Freddie about poll. For weeks now, he and Bisram arguing about Bisram’s poll.
Why Freddie doesn’t leave the man and his poll alone, is beyond explanation. He has a fascination with this man’s poll. He even attack Ravi Dev because Ravi Dev said that one time he saw Bisram’s poll.
Freddie is always having a problem with other people’s polls. But he is not bringing out his poll which dem boys say is longer and more valuable than Bisram’s poll.
Now it looks as if Freddie will have to pay property tax on his poll. Freddie says that he will take out his poll and walk straight into the tax office and say to them “Try taxing this poll!”
But while Freddie and Bisram arguing about whose poll is real, they have a man in a big office and who is close to the President asking for a poll. He loves polls, other people’s polls, and he begging and crying for another one.
Adam doesn’t have to worry about problems with his poll. He was on vacation and left his poll in America. Adam says that he is not worried though because he has a spare poll at home.
There is an ongoing row in the national newspapers between Vishnu Bisram and Freddie about opinion polls said to have been conducted by Bisram. Questions have been raised by Freddie about the credibility of the polls conducted by Bisram. This debate has now swung into a new exchange as to whether Bisram is a teacher, which school he teaches at, whether he is the highest paid teacher in New York and all manner of irrelevancies which obscure the real issue about the polls whose findings became the subject of the original controversy.
About one year ago, this column offered some friendly advice to Bisram. I noted then that because of his track record of accurately predicting the outcome of elections in Guyana and elsewhere, Bisram would eventually face a credibility problem.
It is never advisable for pollsters to make known their political views on various issues since they run the risk of being accused of carrying forward these views and infecting their polling methodology with their own biases.
Bisram has been a regular letter writer in the local media and he constantly ventilates his opinions on a wide range of topics opening himself to criticism that he has political preferences, and his poll findings are being used in furtherance of those findings. I urged him that given the political suspicions that run rampant in Guyana, it would be best for him not to express publicly his political opinions on issues because this would affect how his opinion polls are received.
I understand how persons in the Diaspora feel. I understand the need for them to find a sense of being rooted somewhere and therefore it is always difficult to constrain oneself from expressing an opinion. However, pollsters require that discipline to be able to have that separation from the subject of their polls so as to avoid being accused of infecting their polls with biases based on their own opinions.
Bisram cannot also simply dismiss those who are questioning the sourcing of his funding for these polls. This is important in terms of people’s acceptance of polls. He also needs to name the executives of NACTA or whether it is a one man show. In addition, he needs to explain his methodology so as to subject his findings to scientific scrutiny.
No one has so far come forward and said that he or she actually was a field officer working for Bisram or NACTA in the polls done in Guyana. This is highly unusual in small countries like Guyana. One would have expected by now that Bisram would have been able to point to someone who actually interviewed citizens on behalf of Bisram.
Interestingly enough also no one has come forward so far and confirmed that they were polled, i.e., they were interviewed for one of Bisram’s opinion polls in Guyana. This is also highly unusual since Guyana is a very small society and even though Bisram’s sample in one of his polls was said to be fewer than 1000 persons, not one of these persons confirmed that they were polled.
This debate about Bisram and his poll needs to be ended and it is time for Mr. Bisram to end it. All he has to do is to name five persons who carried out these polls for him. Once he does this and these persons confirm they were field operatives it will remove doubts as to the credibility of the polls.