I will never walk away from my “impertinence.”

Apr 01, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

To say that countless times I have been berated for being “impertinent” and attacking and confronting wrongdoers only to be proven correct can be seen as “beating your own drum.” In a hypocritically barefaced and twisted society like Guyana, you have to beat your own drum. Things are playing out in Guyana that once again will cause people to say that “Freddie wasn’t wrong after all.”
We start with GHK Lall. If any two commentators are totally different they are GHK Lall and Frederick Kissoon. Mr. Lall (a real person, a school teacher) is extremely guarded when he writes. He avoids naming names; he eschews direct language; he is overbearingly diplomatic in style and approach; he does not want to confront the people he feels have done wrong to society.
Mr. Lall has a habit of not directly criticizing the Government of Guyana and its Ministers, but he is indeed not a supporter of the status quo when he writes.
In the Thursday, March 29 edition of the Stabroek News, Mr. Lall was devastating in his commentary on the attitude of certain medical doctors. He was merciless in his condemnation of them. As usual, he avoids specifics, but the reader knows he is referring to the public institutions. I quote him; “ I appeal to our medical practitioners, particularly doctors, to manifest more decency, kindness, understanding and humanity when they deal with the sick…I have listened to horror stories of disrespect…patients have a right to be treated like a human being; why even pets get better treatment from vets.”
This commentary from GHK Lall comes after long and hard exposure of the horror stories at the Georgetown Public Hospital. Two months ago in a column, I called for a certain doctor to be dismissed when she rudely told one of Guyana’s professionals that she is not writing a prescription for him to receive his heart tablets because she is not his assigned doctor.
Over the years, the Georgetown Public Hospital has replied to me with their usual bluff. Other doctors have castigated. But the facts are there to see, and GHK Lall has joined the line of appealers for Guyana to do something about some of these animalistic and absentee doctors that populate the medical institutions that our taxes fund.
I was the only person in this country to publicly state that Mr. Ralph Ramkarran was no different from all the other PPP leaders with their attendant flawed political culture. Mr. Ramkarran was generally seen in the society as one of the better PPP minds. At the funeral of Adam Harris’s father, one of the PNC’s leading lights implored that I do not criticize Ramkarran in my columns because he is the best of the lot inside the PPP.
I graphically disputed that opinion over the years on this page. I went so far to say that I would rate Mr. Ramotar over him in the selection of the PPP’s presidential candidate.
Can any decent Guyanese assess Mr. Ramkarran as being any different from his acolytes in the PPP after what we see him writing since the general elections last year? Not only did he refuse to state why he withdrew his candidacy (if he did do so) but today he is the chief defender, apart from Gail Teixeira, of two crazy notions; PPP should be given the Speakership and the proportionality demand of the PPP in relation to the parliamentary committees.
We come now to Speaker Raphael Trotman. I have taken the bold step to say that I don’t think under Mr. Trotman we will see Parliament being utilized as an agency to clean the Augean stable that Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo left. Our previous generation left us with the saying. “You don’t need a light to see what you can see in the day.”
Mr. Trotman has been making bold statements that are quite pellucid – he will be neutral in his role. I have rejected that concept in two of my columns. My argument is that Guyana is an elected dictatorship (there hasn’t been any meaningful departure from the Jagdeoite tyranny) and Parliament has to be an agent of democracy under the opposition majority
I want to go on record as saying that I don’t think Mr. Trotman will be part of the historical restructuring of the political culture with Parliament being the chief instrument of perestroika and glasnost. I see a tempestuous quarrel coming our way between the combined opposition and Mr. Trotman.
I will ask readers to remember this column when that impasse unfolds. I will then remind you that I will never walk away from my “impertinence”.

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I will never walk away from my “impertinence.”

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