Where the PPP gets these spin doctors from?

Feb 20, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The PPP Government and Mr. Jagdeo cannot deny that they want PR gurus. They spend lots of money to get these people and they get a school of incompetents of which Drs. Prem Misir and Randy Persaud stand out. Misir sits on the board of the Chronicle and has a role in the shape of the Chronicle. He writes a column for that newspaper.
The Chronicle is hardly read and is generally viewed as a gutter newspaper that says the most scandalous things about opposition leaders and government critics.
You would think that comparing the Chronicle with the two independent dailies would be a subject Misir would avoid like the plague but this gentleman actually seeks to lecture these two newspapers on proper journalism.
In relation to this newspaper, he wrote that the publisher, Glen Lall ought to pay more attention to the editorials churned out by the editor. Then he suggested to the editor that he should take a closer look at my columns. Misir complained that the two independent dailies do not devote sufficient space to the achievements of the Guyana Chronicle.
He met with a devastating reply from the Kaieteur News which asked him why the Chronicle doesn’t publish the iniquitous and sordid controversies the Government finds itself in quite often. Kaieteur News went on to point out to Misir that there is no balance in the Chronicle when it comes to this writer. All the letters on me are vicious attacks.
What is Misir’s point? He hasn’t got one. Yet he is supposed to be a PR guru for the government. Now we have Dr. Randy Persaud. Persaud just can’t seem to get it right as this newspaper pointed out to him in its Thursday edition in an editorial note to one of his letters.
Persaud should know that propaganda does not have to be childish and arid. Propaganda can be packaged in presentable forms. Let us examine the competence of this latest addition to the Government’s PR boardroom.
Any schoolboy would tell you that all of the great philosophers put their minds to several propositions in their studies. In other words, they have experimented with several ideas out of which you can isolate the one that interests you and develop your own interpretation of it.
For example, Karl Marx wrote about the theory of surplus value in the economic exploitation of the employee-class. But he also dealt with concepts like alienation, the dialectic in history, and the meaning of God. If you are doing a sociological study of modern day society, Marx’ approach to alienation may be useful. Why should you be concerned with his theory of surplus value in capitalist relations of production?
Plato had a unique approach to education. He also wrote about the inherent strengths and weaknesses of classes.
Freud dealt with a range of topics in his study of the mind, the weakest link in his many conceptualisations being the interpretation of dreams. A student can pick what he/she considers a useful idea in the holistic arsenal of any thinker and apply it to a particular situation.
This is what I did in my article last week titled, “Elected dictatorship and semi-fascism in Guyana: A “Marxist Analysis.”
I highlighted one of several theories of the late Pakistani scholar, Hamza Alavi, and adopted it to understanding the willingness of the post-colonial state in Guyana from Burnham to Jagdeo to use violence. The Alavi concept I employed was “the Over-Developed State.”
Alavi argued that the post-colonial state inherited a monstrous bureaucratic and security machine from the colonials and the inherent culture of coercion in that system has been passed on.
Not understanding one word of what I wrote, Randy Persaud behaved like the king who thought he had on clothes.
He began to shout out in a letter last Sunday in KN that Freddie Kissoon didn’t know what he is talking about because Alavi sees the peasantry as the most revolutionary class in the Third World and Guyana does not have a peasantry. Can someone please tell Persaud what my article was about?
It was on why post-colonial governments coerce its citizens. And Guyana is specifically examined. The essay was not on the class structure of Guyana, how classes behave in a post-colonial setting and which class is likely to confront post-colonial dictatorship in Guyana.
I was not interested in applying Alavi’s theory of the peasant class and its relationships to other strata and their Gramscian potentials. It was a simple essay that sought to explain violent state behaviour using ONE, I repeat, ONE idea from Alavi that I found relevant to Guyana.

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Where the PPP gets these spin doctors from?

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