Kissoon blatantly misrepresents what I wrote

Jan 17, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor
Freddie Kissoon’s column captioned, “Harry’s areolation and harlequinade” in the Kaieteur News of January 15, 2011, is ostensibly a response to my recent letter published in the SN of January 6, 2011, under the caption. “Jagdeo’s early experience as president shaped his thinking”.
Regrettably, Kissoon’s article is basically an attack on me instead of a critique of the facts I presented. Incidentally, just as I was finalizing this response to Kissoon’s piece, I glanced at today’s SN (January 16, 2011) and saw a letter from Cary Fraser that rebutted my critique of his article. Kissoon should take a lesson from Mr. Fraser to learn how to disagree without being disagreeable.
First and foremost, Kissoon blatantly misrepresents what I wrote in relation to Cary Fraser’s article. I commented not on Fraser’s thesis or conclusion, but on the statement “… Bharat Jagdeo, who was born in 1964 and became President in 1999, represented a new generation who had not been witness to the traumas of 1962-64. However, his tenure as President has confirmed the PPP leadership’s inability to transcend the bitterness engendered by the ‘troubles’ of the 1960s…”
In my letter, I pointed out that while Mr. Jagdeo did not experience the “troubles” of 1962-64, his early years as president were reminiscent of the 1962-64 period and likely shaped his presidency. Hopefully in the future editors will give me the opportunity to present a detailed exposition of this point.
In my letter to which Mr. Kissoon refers, I stated that in the early years of Mr. Jagdeo’s presidency, the PPP’s hold on government was tenuous. In relation to this point, Mr. Kissoon asks for documentation. Now, here is documentation provided by none other than Mr. Kissoon himself. In his series of articles in 2003 he wrote “What happened is that the PLM let them loose on Guyana so that their crime spree could undermine social stability, weaken the government, create circumstances of non-rule and allow for the creation of an interim regime…. After Andrew Douglas’s death, all hell broke loose. The formula was now the assassination of policemen, the killing of Indians, violent robberies that were later joined by kidnapping….A killing spree began. Idris Chester’s house was burned down, Kwayana had to run, with David Hinds close behind.”
In relation to his question “If the PPP’s hold on power was thin after the implementation of “mo fyaah/slo fyaah” then how did the Jagdeo presidency survive? In my letter, in addition to “mo fyaah/slow fire”, I made reference to the jail break, the “freedom fighters”, and the demoralized police and army. For answer to Kissoon’s question, once again I turn to his own writing. In the 2003 series, he ended thus: “Finally, the kidnapping of American diplomatic personnel, Stephen Lesniak was indeed a turning point….The Americans simply told government, opposition and security forces that they want Buxton cleaned up, that
it can be done, and it must be done because if not, the Americans were going to flex its muscles in ways that would have extreme consequences for Guyana’s future. All parties agreed that Buxton must now be fought against and be retaken. That is what happened.”
In the ending paragraphs of his article Kissoon writes “Last year, Hergash did a two-part series for the “In The Diaspora” column for the SN. He overlooked the tyranny that inheres in the PPP’s hegemony and declared that the PPP will win the upcoming poll”. Once again, to put it mildly, Mr. Kissoon is being disingenuous in criticising me. In his column captioned “The masturbation goes on” in Kaieteur News of October 16, 2010 which was written subsequent to my two-part series, he wrote, “In Guyana, people are so mentally perplexed at the masturbatory display of the opposition parties in Parliament that by some weird logic they may end up seeing the ruling oligarchy as more logical than their competitors and may very well vote for another term for the PPP”.
Mr. Kissoon has certainly used more flowery language than me, but he came to a similar conclusion as what I wrote in my two-part series. Yet Kissoon has the audacity to write “Hergash wears a strange, esoteric pair of glasses. These lenses obfuscate the abominations and immoralities that have characterized the 19-year-old autocracy of Cheddi Jagan’s party”.
Freddie Kissoon’s amnesia of the confrontational and turbulent years of the early Jagdeo’s presidency is understandable. His writing of that period is a likely embarrassment to his more recent alliances and posturing. Let us take a final look at the duplicity that has emerged between then and now. In 2003 he wrote, “There is no evidence available at the moment that the top leaders of ACDA or the PNC knew about the jailbreak plan, but once it happened and the Douglas tape was made, both ACDA and the PNC and the trio that makes up the WPA leadership…saw political usefulness in the Buxton factor…. My own feeling is that the PNC’s tactical condoning of Ocean Eleven will haunt them at election time in 2006 even if Raphael Trotman is made the presidential candidate.
As for the WPA, it is virtually dead”. Still, these days, Freddie keeps on harping that it is Indian racism that put the PPP in power in 2006 and he conveniently forgets the earlier connection he made between action and reaction.
Harry Hergash

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