Looking for a place to survive

Apr 22, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I will warn any citizen of this land who wants to become a human rights activist that he/she has to understand that criticism, some mild, some nasty, will be part of the territory. You keep focused on your vision, goals, activism and obligations and go on with your life. This is human nature. You will be called a thief, madman, ugly, unkempt, pretender. The labels are endless. The drama will never go away. Ask a 21st century giant like Obama about the horrible blogs that are carried on him.
Some people will never like you because you have ventilated the unspeakable side of their generous friends or you exposed their corrupt or perverted or immoral connections or you have written about the inexcusably wrong things they have done to innocent human beings. The list goes on.
I am never bothered, because I have spent a long time in social and political activism and I know that an activist can never be liked by all and sundry. That is life. That is human nature.
When Mr. Christopher Ram asked me on his television programme, “Plain Talk,” how do I respond to the negative comments, my answer was that it leaves no scars because for every hate message you receive, there is also a sentiment of love expressed by your fellow human being.
Anyone who reads this newspaper would know that over the past years up to the present, Mr. Vishnu Bisram has developed an obsession with me. Each week there is a letter in this newspaper by this gentleman, only on Frederick Kissoon. Absolutely nothing else! They basically repeat the same thing.
Google the name Devanand Bhagwan and you will find over the past four years letters in KN by this man and all, I repeat, all are on the bad things Frederick Kissoon writes about. I don’t know who this person is. Joey Jagan constantly carps on the “lies” of Freddie Kissoon. Why? I exposed his father’s partial destruction of Guyana.
A man named Gordon Forte wrote last month to say that since twenty years ago, he was told that I engaged in scurrilous misrepresentations and inventions. Twenty years ago, I was hardly a columnist. Why is he so bitter? According to this fellow, Sharief Khan is one of his heroes and I was unfair to Khan in a column.
You read further and you get a glimpse of the politics of this man. I don’t know who he is. It is my honest opinion that Bisram, Bhagwan, Jagan and Forte are footnotes that no one pays attention to. I have no interest in carrying nor will I ever carry on any exchange with these people.
In the case of Dr. Henry Jeffrey, this is a different kettle of fish.
Dr. Jeffrey resents my analysis that he is looking for a place among the opposition or a PPP without Jagdeo. In his latest polemic (KN, March 29), Jeffrey let readers know that I have “malicious intent,” and I am on a malicious rampage and that “Kissoon’s malevolence is bedeviling.” Yet this is the very man who achieved leadership in both the Burnham/PNC and Jagdeo/PPP governments.
He wrote about them, “I do not believe that our country is in this condition because over the last half of a century our politicians have been wicked.” Mr. Jeffrey refuses to use the label of wickedness against politicians who have devastated this country for personal and racist reasons. But this very Jeffrey is quite happy to use the word “malevolence” to describe me.
Malevolence is a far negatively harsher attribute than wickedness. This is the same Jeffrey who wrote that many people were poor but they never resorted to stealing a book they could not buy so Kissoon cannot justify stealing a book from his employer.
In an amazingly shameless act of double standard, Jeffery tells his readers that many persons who, if they were in Mr. Jagdeo’ shoes would have done the same because many of us have dictatorial instincts.
He repeats this faulty generalization to his interviewer, Mr. Christopher Ram.
When Mr. Ram asked him if Mr. Jagdeo will in fact be leaving political office, he told Mr. Ram if he, Ram was in Jagdeo’s shoes if he wouldn’t have done the same. Ram politely told him that he has just pioneered a change in the constitution of the Guyana Lawn Tennis Federation to limit the presidency to two terms. Finally, only Jeffrey doesn’t know that the PPP has told the world that its government is a coalition with the Civic Component.

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