Ravi Dev’s combustible political atmosphere

Jan 17, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I refer to Mr. Ravi Dev’s letter, “Could Mr. Kissoon explain his falsification and mine,” Kaieteur News, January 12, 10.
Dev began his missive with words to the effect that in 2008, he cautioned me to ‘take care’ about “the tone of his (my) polemics in our combustible political atmosphere.” Let me say at this stage of my assessment of Dev that this is monumentally hypocritical and intellectually dishonest.
In our polemical exchange over the past two years, I keep asking Dev who is the creator of this combustible political atmosphere
I have offered Dev countless examples where the policies and speeches of the PPP Government and the Jagdeo presidency have exacerbated the racial poison that seeps out of this society.
I have used an ocean of examples but over the past two years Dev has most shamelessly avoided a direct response. He never does.
Ravi Dev is shameless and I say this unapologetically and it is what I feel in my heart about him. Just to take a few examples of his egregious descent into that pit of racial poison. A few weeks ago, he alluded to solutions to stop human rights abuse by the police carefully avoiding to mention the word, ‘government.’
Any discussion of human rights in Guyana must, I repeat must take in nasty abuse by this government. (1) – Dismissal of public servants without due process of which the GWI leadership is guilty. (2) – The refusal to implement decisions of the High Court with regard to reinstatement of public servants who won their cases. (3) – The erasure of the Critchlow Labour College.
In all of these situations listed here, African Guyanese have been the victims. Yet Mr. Dev has the temerity to tell me about the tone of my polemics
I will not continue the enumeration because I know that Dev is deliberately being evasive. Dev referred to Government’s “alleged” connection with a drug lord. This man who can find evidence of incitement in my writings and the letters of Lincoln Lewis cannot find evidence of a drug relation between the Government of Guyana and Roger Khan. Dev thinks we are fools in this country.
In that letter of his, Dev writes; “Mr. Kissoon attempts to evade one of the charges I had made about his historiography…” Look who is talking? At least he concedes that I have avoided one of his charges.
He has avoided all of my charges. The man just does not dwell on the subjects where his propaganda, falsifications and deceptions are exposed. Let’s do some more exposing. Freddie Kissoon, Kean Gibson, Lincoln Lewis, David Hinds etc contribute to the heightening of tensions in a “combustible political atmosphere” but not the PPP leaders.
I mentioned the following egregious remarks by the President to Dev but his silence still reverberates. At one of the death anniversary celebrations of Dr. Jagan, President Jagdeo told an all Indian audience that if the opposition wins the election, they will give away AK-47s to the very people who stole them from the army. President Jagdeo said he has a tape that proves involvement of opposition figures with Buxton based criminals. No evidence, no tape, but Dev doesn’t see that as a tone of incitement. Dev only reads what Kissoon, Lewis and others write.
After the Lusignan massacre, a senior Cabinet Minister publicly said that Mark Benchop was in the village the same day.
Apparently Benschop’s life is not important so that kind of incitement does not find mention in Dev’s writings. After the fire at the Ministry of Health, the Minister of Home Affairs pointed to its intellectual authors. Anyone that can read between the lines knows who Mr. Rohee is referring to. Yet to date, these “conspirators” are not named much less arrested.
What then is this combustible political atmosphere and who is contributing to it? I am penning this letter on Friday evening. Dev’s Sunday column may be on me again and he will reply to this letter. I take the boldness in saying that none of these incitements mentioned here will be dealt with by Dev.
Trust me readers when I say that on Sunday, Freddie Kissoon’s writing will be analysed using the concepts of Foucault, Hegel, Derrida etc but not one single word will be assigned to the processes of bad governance, elected dictatorship, venal, corrupt and immoral exercise of power by the PPP Government.
I can anticipate Dev. This is what he will write; “if Kissoon is saying that the Government is a dictatorship, well the elections offer a way of removing the PPP.” I repeat, there will not be one, single word on the multiplicities of evil actions that have come out of the corridors of power since 1992. Frankly, Mr. Dev, you have been exposed for what you always were.
Frederick Kissoon

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