Priya Mahase blends partial truths with malicious fabrications

Feb 01, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,

Since Priya Mahase chose to attack my character in her rant captioned, “IAC views Freddie Kissoon’s opinions as uninformed” (29-01-10), I request the space and opportunity to respond.

The politically and ethnically well fed smugness that course through every line of Mahase’s missive is understandable, even while at the same time being nauseatingly unpalatable. The IAC is an ethnic organisation enjoying a political arena governed by an empathetically conscious ethnic regime.

Outpourings from some in its prominent membership that “Guyana would have been a mangrove swamp if not for the arrival of certain ethnic immigrants”, or that the festival of Mashramani amount to a “dumbing down to blackness”, is more indicative of the identity and ideology of the IAC, than the deceiving, “all of us are one”, phrases Mahase injects into her rant from time to time.

Bottom line, the IAC benefits from a sharing of ethnicity between its leadership and the political leadership of the nation. The organisation receives the kind of disproportionate funding, compared to groups like ACDA that it does. So please, Miss Mahase, your attempts to present the IAC as a colour blind altruistic body becomes laughable under this reality and circumstance.

Priya Mahase’s outrage over the fact that Freddie Kissoon chose to name me as his hero is painfully obvious. So much so she rages that, “…A few weeks ago he noted that one of his Guyanese heroes is Mark Benschop, a former treason accuse who allegedly was responsible for an invasion of the Office of the President in 2002. That invasion of the nation’s highest office led to the ransacking of some offices within, grievous bodily harm to security personnel and the deaths of some”.

Like so many of her ilk, Mahase blends partial truths with malicious fabrications, in order to attack the messengers who are not obsequiously receptive to her perspectives and the organisation that she represents. The individual who took responsibility for leading a crowd of protestors into the Office of the President, and who was pardoned by the President, wrote publicly about the circumstances that brought me to that scene. Nothing of which he wrote jells with the ridiculous assertions of Mahase.

In fact I stood before a jury that, after examining the case, was deadlocked 11 to 1 in favour of acquittal. Unfortunately for me, too many in Guyana still are, including the political powers that be in the regime that now hold our nation by the throat. That is why, despite a judicial outcome that would have triggered the release or bail of anyone in a similar situation elsewhere in the world, herculean efforts were pursued to keep me locked up.

Further to that sequence of thoughts, the criminal and ethical responsibility for the killings that occurred that day rest on the shoulders of specific trigger happy members of the discipline service So, like I inferred in the foregoing, no amount of non sequiturs thrown around by Mahase in a collection of paragraphs are capable of obfuscating the obvious.

There are heroes of Mahase’s against whom there are more than allegations of invasion of private domains. There are eye witnesses who have vocally and vociferously testified to such infractions. The difference between that kind of hero and someone like me chosen by Freddie Kissoon, that is, for people of Priya Mahase ilk, is a product of our reproductive origins. Mine caused me to emerge looking one way, and others caused them to appear differently. That difference, particularly in Guyana, influences an automatic presumption of innocence or guilt, based on the physical characteristics of the reproductive agencies.

Mark Benschop, if I might be permitted the privilege of using the third person option in this aspect of my observations, runs a not for profit charitable organisation dedicated to the needs and concerns of Guyanese individuals and families, many of whom can barely eke out an existence in these harsh and uncompromising times. The criterion that triggers aid is the urgency and severity of each individual situation, rather than any association with an ethnic grouping. The Benschop foundation does not need to expound in broad generalities to convince any sane person about its diverse outlook and outreach. The evidence exists in the mosaic of individuals and families who flock to the doors in search of succor. For me, violence and death is not only awful when the victims are predominantly of one ethnic group or another. I am repulsed by wanton killings and violence that creates victims anywhere, regardless of whether it is in Lusignan, Agricola, the Guyana prisons, or a police lock-up.

I am not locked into an ethnically influenced feudal time warp that operates like blinders that limit the periphery of my outlook. Those zones are reserved for people like Priya Mahase, who have become so accustomed to the privilege and entitlements of ethnic power, that they attach a sort of divinity to its reality.

Mark Benschop