The Guyana government killing its critics is a deadly gamble

Mar 20, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Mr. Jagdeo, addressing PPP supporters at the death anniversary of Cheddi Jagan two weeks ago, told his bussed audience (they bus people in all the time) that I am a jackass “who can write what he wants and he hasn’t been harmed.” Mr. Jagdeo’s point was that the critics of his government enjoy their freedom.
I am under no illusion that highly placed persons in the Government would be disposed to physically attacking many of us but cannot. My analysis is that it is not prepared to take that risk. There is no doubt in my mind that the desire and intent are alive. The deterring factor is the result of such a high-stake gamble.
Painting itself as democratic because it does not harm its detractors is deliberately misleading. The brutal fact is that objective reality on the ground prevents the Guyana Government from engaging in Machiavellian violence. Murder of critics will undermine the solidity of the regime and cause it to lose power. That is the fear that currently exists in the dictatorship.
Can you kill the publisher of the country’s leading media organization and there will be no regional and international fallout? Can the dictators disappear the country’s leading accountant who is a respected businessman with regional and international connections? It will not be easy for the cabal in Guyana to harm the head of the TUC without a backlash from the labour organizations throughout the world. Mark Benschop is extremely popular among the people of south Georgetown. Killing him can have unforeseen consequences.
All this talk about anti-government activists like me enjoying freedom to write what I want is deception that needs to be exposed. State agents want to physically remove many of us, but the fascist planners are worried about the risk involved.
A Caribbean Government just cannot go about killing its critics and remain in power. There is no precedent for it in the Caribbean. Burnham was involved in the Rodney homicide and the aftermath of that episode was the destruction of Burnham’s psychology. The Ronald Waddell assassination produced a deadly under-current.
If it can physically harm its critics in ways that would hide its involvement, the elected dictatorship of Guyana would. I could have died after that attack on me last May when a mixture of miasmic substances was thrown in my face. My fear was HIV. In that mixture was feces.
I waited until three months passed to take an HIV test. If I was infected and had died then death would not have been as a result of an assassination, but it would have been just that. I have constantly warned some high-profile activists to be careful with their security
Fascism uses subtle ways of murdering those it wants out of the way and the forms of death are endless and do not point to state involvement. There is food poisoning. I am extremely careful about where I eat. I never leave my juice and food unattended.
I don’t party and club. I am not a visitor to the cocktail circuit. There is drunk driving that leads to an accident in uncivilized hours, but you were pushed off the road and alcohol thrown down your throat. That wouldn’t work with me.
I never drank alcohol in all my life. No one would believe my death was due to drunk driving. I am hardly on the roadways after 21:00 hours.
Mr. Jagdeo told his Berbice listeners that no one has harmed me. Well Berbicians have to be jackasses (the word Mr. Jagdeo used to describe me to them) if they think someone dropped from the skies and threw that dirty, filthy, miasmic, poisonous substance on me.
The people of Guyana are not jackasses. They know who was behind that attack. Every decent, sane Guyanese knows where that plot was hatched. The election is drawing near, and the gamble of killing people is definitely not on. That would be the surest way of putting the PPP at the bottom of the ocean.
But Berbicians should not be fooled – the intent was always there. I end with a reflection. I may be a jackass. But my life in Guyana as a private and public citizen has always been built on a foundation of substantial honesty. I was never involved in murder and the stealing of public money. The only thing I ever stole was books. They made me a better human being.

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The Guyana government killing its critics is a deadly gamble

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