Randy’s rancorous randannite

Oct 08, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Dr. Randy Persaud, employed by the Office of the President, has written a long letter in the Stabroek News (“Contrary to what the newspapers report Guyana is on the move,” SN, Oct 6) in which he penned the following line; “Please allow me the use of this medium to communicate with the Guyanese Diaspora population.”
This is funny. I am sure thousands (yes thousands) of Guyanese in the Diaspora had to laugh when they read that line by this gentleman.
Randy has huge territory in the Chronicle but he asked for the Stabroek News space. One would like to think that Randy knows that with today’s technology you can determine how much visitors an online newspaper has for a particular day. It is called hits. For example, in Tuesday’s Kaieteur News, the paper reported that its Monday edition had 57, 981 hits.
Poor Randy must know that comparing the hits of the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News with the Chronicle is like comparing a ninety-year-old village cricketer with Brian Lara. Now it looks like Randy is going to be confined to the letter pages of the Kaieteur News and the Stabroek News for as long as he stays in Guyana because I doubt whether those newspapers will shift him to column status since he already has such a station in the Chronicle.
This is not nice because Randy will not be able to speak to the Diaspora since overseas Guyanese do not read the Chronicle. Now Randy cannot dispute that. If he does argue that the Chronicle has as many hits as KN and SN, then why bother to solicit space in the Stabroek News in order to connect to the Diaspora? Stick with the Chronicle.
Christopher Ram, Adam Harris, Tarron Khemraj and this writer are quite happy to occupy space in the KN and SN without asking the Chronicle for coverage. Randy loves the KN and SN more than his own newspaper because he wrote a vexed letter to SN complaining that one of his missives went unpublished.
Randy seems to be an unlucky man. The very day he chose to outline achievements of the Guyana Government, the KN and SN carried an unflattering picture of Guyana from the UN. The UNDP report says that two out of every three Guyanese with a tertiary education do not want to stay in Randy’s and Leslie’s Guyana (Dr Leslie Ramsammy last year wrote a letter titled “My Guyana” in which he tells the story of a wonderfully developing country). The UNDP report puts Guyana at number 114 in its Human Development Index. No need to mention where Guyana’s Caricom partners are; they are way, way in front of Guyana. For example, in the Human Poverty Index, Guyana is 48 while little Barbados is ranked at number 4 (which explains why Sir Shridath Ramphal and Rickey Singh chose to live there).
Will Randy make a similar move or stay in the US?
I feel sorry for Randy. Now why KN and SN had to carry those findings on Guyana on the same day when Randy begged SN to give him space to address the Guyanese Diaspora? This was really bad luck. You see people’s memories are short. If the KN and SN had carried that UNDP report last week, by this week, people would have forgotten about it.
And Tuesday when they read the scintillating record of Randy about how much progress there is here, it would have stuck. And bingo! Randy won! That wasn’t to be. Poor Randy! His account of human development in his second home, Guyana (I’m assuming he has American nationality because he has lived outside of Guyana for more than thirty-five years) has been severely weakened (shall I say devastated?) by the juxtaposition of his glorious account and the pessimistic portrait of the UNDP.
Better luck next time Randy!
But wait. It is not only in the Stabroek News that Randy ran out of charm but also in this newspaper too. On the very day, SN published Randy’s charming evaluation of progress in Guyana he was the subject of two no-nonsense letters in KN. One is by Dr. Rishi Thakur of the Berbice campus of UG and the other by a Diaspora Guyanese, Mike Persaud. Not to bother though Randy, you have your propaganda work to do. Let me say in closing that the canvas you painted was porous, your brush was not suited to the task and the ink you used had expired.
I would describe your outpouring as rancorous randannite. And I mean no insult. I will describe that randannite in more details later.

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