Kissoon never wrote explicitly or implicitly that Dev works in Office of the President

Feb 25, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
First, your daily columnist, Mr. Freddie Kissoon, has truly become a proverbial thorn in the sides of many people, but especially those on the side of the PPP and its government.
I believe he is intelligent enough to understand the rationale behind the choice of his topics and brave enough to stand up for his convictions and perspectives.
And on this basis I will defer to him for choosing to pen his latest controversial column, “I did not and will not run away from my country; the three musketeers did,” (Kaieteur News, February 22).
I actually read the column and the first conclusion I came to was that he was comparing himself to Drs. Prem Misir, Randy Persaud and Ravi Dev, who left Guyana at separate times many years ago to take up residence overseas, where they also successfully completed tertiary level studies. By his own admission, Mr. Kissoon also left Guyana to do tertiary level studies in Canada, so I take it that his argument is that while the four have the overseas studying in common, the issue is that he returned home and helped fight against the Burnham authoritarian regime, but they did not.
I don’t know if the three (Misir, Persaud and Dev) not returning to Guyana on completion of their studies could be construed to describe them as ‘the three musketeers’ because it was never established whether at the time of their departure from Guyana their aim was to experience the adventure of a better life overseas rather than return home at some point and fight against the machinations of the Forbes Burnham authoritarian regime.
This is not to defend the three men, per se, but to try and put the ‘musketeers’ label in proper perspective because many other overseas Guyanese left home before and after these three and it had more to do with survival than about avoiding confronting the formidable political forces of that era. Otherwise all overseas Guyanese would be ‘musketeers’, no?
By the way, on a lighter note, I am not even sure if the Thesaurus dictionary definition of the story of the three musketeers has any ironic resemblance to these four men (Misir, Persaud, Dev and Kissoon): ‘The Three Musketeers’ is a novel (1844) by French writer Alexandre Dumas. Set in France during the reign of Louis XIII, this historical romance tells the story of a young adventurer, D’Artagnan, who is taken under the wing of three musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.
The four become embroiled in a series of adventures involving love, politics, swordsmanship, and the machinations of the evil Cardinal Richelieu.
Second, Dr. Dev reacted to Mr. Kissoon’s letter with a letter of his own, “I expect a full retraction and an apology from Mr. Kissoon,” (February 23), because Dr. Dev erroneously believed Mr. Kissoon claimed or even implied that he (Dev) was employed by the Office of the President. Like I said, I read Mr. Kissoon’s letter and that was not what I deducted, because I know that Dr. Dev was not employed by OP.
Here is what Mr. Kissoon wrote: “The Three Musketeers have totally ignored two advocacies of their boss – we must boycott the Kaieteur News and we must see the private media as the new opposition.
Mr. Jagdeo is a patient man. Most leaders would have fired Misir and Persaud for such contempt that they have shown him.” In Guyanese political parlance, a boss could be anybody with whom one works without even being paid; it can even be a title of endearment or respect for others, but what undercuts Dr. Dev’s feeling of being maligned is the last sentence of the extracted piece above: “Most leaders (bosses) would have fired Misir and Persaud…” The reason why Dr. Dev was not included in the firing was because Mr. Kissoon knew Dr. Dev was not employed by the leader/boss/President.
Another letter writer, if it is a real person, Rishideo Ramlakan, drew an equally erroneous conclusion when s/he wrote, “In his column Mr. Kissoon accuses Mr. Ravi Dev as being a propagandist working out of the Office of the President. This is a cheap shot by Kissoon.
Now that Mr. Dev has made it crystal clear that he has never been employed by the Office of the President or with the PPP (Kaieteur News, February 23, 2010), Kissoon should be man enough and apologise for his falsehood in this particular case.” (See Kaieteur News, February 24, “Guyana needs to encourage its highly skilled overseas-based people to return.”).
Again, Mr. Kissoon never said or even implied Dr. Dev works for OP or the PPP. It may be that Dr. Dev, whose previous writings took great issue with the PPP for not adequately addressing the security dilemma of Indians who were being wrongly targeted for property damage and violent and even deadly attacks, has morphed to become more supportive of the PPP and or its government, now that the security dilemma seems to have ameliorated.
In fact, he did write a piece asking how come Roger Khan was able to do what the police and the army couldn’t do, but that’s a point to be fully addressed in another letter, suffice to say that the answer comes right back to the government.
Finally, Dr. Prem Misir took time out from his otherwise hectic, overloaded schedule to pen his response to Mr. Kissoon, “Kissoon and gang are no threat to government,” (February 24).
It was a great relief to learn that the government feels this way, given that in Mr. Kissoon’s February 24 column captioned, “I would expect an apology from Mr. Dev, too,” he said Dr. Dev wrote on September 27, 2009, that ‘Kissoon and others demand that ordinary people resort to violence, if necessary, to remove the elected government’, and again on November 22, 2009, ‘Kissoon and Gibson’s new history is a narrative of hate that justifies marauding gangs murdering ordinary men, women and children’.
If Dr. Dev said those things, he carelessly placed his credibility on the line.
Given the failure of this government and to help Guyana come into her potential in the last 17 years and the need for constructive debate and discussion on what needs to be done, we have seemingly highly intelligent people, especially the university educated ones, engaging in over the top personality based political pugilism.
The people don’t benefit from this kind of stuff, so in the interest of searching for tenable and viable solutions to the ailments of our society, economy and body politics, let us keep our focus on the issues that matter most to the people.
Emile Mervin

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