Threat or obsession or both?

Feb 25, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Writing in the letter pages of this paper yesterday, Dr. Prem Misir let it be known that “Freddie Kissoon and gang are no threat to the Government.” Before I come to that I need to contextualize in common parlance what is meant by the Three Musketeers (the term I used on Monday to describe Misir, Randy Persaud and Ravi Dev). Misir got it wrong.
He described what the Three Musketeers are in literal and historic terms. In the Guyanese context, when we refer to the Three Musketeers we are using the term facetiously, meaning blunderers who cannot get anything right.
I don’t know which primary school Misir has been to but in South Georgetown, schoolboys used that term to describe any group of three who cannot do anything right and we laugh at them and call them Three Musketeers.
Mark Benschop knew the Guyanese context of the term and that is why he objected to the label that included him, Norris Witter and Lincoln Lewis when the Kaieteur News carried his press conference on his intention to run as Mayor of Georgetown. I thought that was unfair to the three men who are dedicated nationalists.
My motive last Monday was to use the term against the propagandists at the Office of the President (OP). Of course Ravi Dev let us know that he should not have been included in the description of the three Musketeers who work at OP. I apologised to Dev, but I want Dev to know that I think he is an apologist for the Office of the President and the PPP.
This is the context in which I used the description ‘Three Musketeers’ and not in the sense of the book written by Alexandre Dumas.
I will not refer to any human being on this earth as honourable and chivalrous when those persons support a government whose human rights violations included horrible mistreatment of female spouses, involuntary sex with underage girls; solicitation of homosexual sex with underage boys; assistance to deadly killers in the narcotics trade; stealing of public money in the billions and banking it in foreign countries; coercion of secretaries for sex with the resultant suicide of one such innocent secretary; the rapacious selling off of a country’s resources to the leaders’ friends, just to name a few semi-civilized perversities.
Dr. Misir says I am no threat to the Government. I do not see myself as a threat to any institution in this country and do not want to be a threat to any institution. All I do on this page, when I am picketing on the streets, when I am giving public lectures and when I am engaged in union activities at my work place, is what I have done all my life since I was perhaps fourteen – fight for human rights.
The struggle against the terrible exercise of naked power is the story of my life. I believe in what the 18th century contract theorists wrote. Rouseau, Locke and Hobbes concluded that in the social contract between the governed and governor, the governed has a right to remove the leader when he/she breaks the contract. To this end I will participate willingly in the creation of the Velvet Revolution in my country.
What threat is Misir talking about? I don’t want to be a threat to anybody.
It is the Government of Guyana that is giving the impression to the nation that I am a threat by pursuing an obsession with me in the Chronicle. For last year, there were over 200 hundred letters on me. The previous year, the amount was higher than that figure. All the pro-government blogs are on Freddie Kissoon, attacking me and my family.
The year has just begun and there are more than twenty letters in the Chronicle on me since January 1, and the Guyana Times has joined in this nastiness. Misir’s other two partners, Randy Persaud and Ravi Dev, have written more on me than any other individual.
Persaud has just arrived and research the numbers of his letters to all the newspapers; the majority is on me. President Jagdeo has used unparliamentarily, undiplomatic language more often at me than any other critic including the official opposition parties.
So it could be that they see me as a threat but they certainly have an obsession with me.
Finally, which gang is Misir referring to? Who is Frederick Kissoon’s gang? Peeping Tom once referred to me as a lonely person. Indeed he/she is right. I stick to myself and I am not seeking the comfort or protection of any umbrella.
One of my favourite songs is Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man.”

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