The night I took Lincoln Lewis to dinner

Jun 02, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Lincoln Lewis and I have been friends a long time, so I know he would not be unfair to me to deny that the evening I took him to dinner, I paid the bill, but I did ask that the dish I ordered be shared in two. The owner is my friend so he did oblige. The place was Julian’s at the junction of Church and Cummings Street, but more into Cummings Street. We ate cook-up rice and fried fish.
I recall that Lincoln and I were the guests of Mark Benschop so after we left, I said I wanted to talk to him about Ramon Gaskin. So we stopped a Julian’s. I asked Lincoln how long he knew Gaskin. He said in the nineties. I responded that I knew Gaskin since I was a scrawny, emasculated, hungry eighteen-year-old from Wortmanville, knocking around politics. That was how long I knew Gaskin. I grew up, went to universities abroad and came back to serve my country and was better able to analyse people like Ramon Gaskin and Miles Fitzpatrick.
Gaskin, Fitzpatrick and Rupert Roopnaraine were never my cup of tea, because all three are deeply flawed and opportunistic political actors. I know the philosophical (as opposed to ideological) nature of these people. Nobody talks back to Fitzpatrick. So consciously elitist and aristocratic is Miles Fitzpatrick that you don’t dare disagree with him. And who was I, a little dark-skinned creature from nowhere, to talk back to Fitzpatrick. He never forgave me. I honestly believe that if you ask Fitzpatrick to name an individual on Planet Earth he truly dislikes, it would be me. As if I could be bothered, and certainly not now as I am passing into old age.
I gave a biography of Gaskin to Lincoln. About eighteen years (yes, eighteen) ago, I did a Stabroek News column warning readers about his politics now that he was back in Guyana. Ramon Gaskin is philosophically tied to the PPP. Not to Jagan, Teixeira, Luncheon or Ramotar, but to the PPP. Once there is a PPP, Gaskin will support it. Ideology and philosophy are completely different forms of knowledge. Philosophy is about ontology. Ideology is false consciousness. It can be enduring or it can be fleeting. Philosophy is about the essential being of a person.
Gaskin, will flirt around every opposition group. That is his nature, but he will never be loyal to any except the PPP. This explains his extreme closeness to BK Tiwari. I watched Gaskin defending communism in his interview with Yesu Persaud. Strange! A communist faithfully and loyally serves one of Guyana’s richest capitalists. An agnostic like me should become a priest. Sex accused UG lecturer, Evan Persaud, chose Gaskin to defend him at his disciplinary hearing rather than a lawyer. Gaskin and Evan Persaud are buddy friends. I told Lincoln Lewis and Mark Benschop I will not function in the same organization with Gaskin because of concern for my security.
There are times in this country that I climb into a spaceship, go way into the skies, look down upon my country and laugh at its people. I have the last laugh of course.
In the WPA, I never sought any relationship with Roopnaraine. Over the years, even the WPA has come to question whether Roopnaraine has any political loyalty to any organization or ideology. But don’t let’s go there, because some in the WPA leadership are my personal friends and I will always protect them. It was the great Jocelyn Dow, partner of Roopnaraine, who through Miles Fitzpatrick requested that Stabroek News drop me as a columnist. David de Caires, a decent man, called me in and said. “Freddie I am under pressure, rest up for three months.” I guess you know what I told David.
Yes, I always have the last laugh. Fourteen years ago, I began to make critical remarks on David Dabydeen. No one supported my evaluation. Now look at the criticism of Dabydeen fourteen years after. I am laughing. I knew Dabydeen was no scholar or had any political qualities. At the Pegasus, on the occasion of the conferring of a doctorate on Yesu Persaud from Warwick University, I refused to shake his hands. Glenn Lall and others (including John Mair aka Bill Cotton) insisted that I do and I did.
Moses Nagamootoo is someone that I believe has integrity, so he would not deny that I constantly ask him why he keeps a close friendship with Dabydeen.  Dabydeen was plucked from academic obscurity by President Janet Jagan and has remained faithful to the PPP since. But Dabydeen has no keen mind.
Dabydeen is a figure of amusement like his friend Rickey Singh and like his very close buddy, Prem Misir. Misir announced to Guyana that North Lancashire University has awarded him the title of professorship. This was the first time in history that a man served in another country as a public servant for twenty years and a university he doesn’t work at, in both research or teaching, conferred a professorship on him. But I was told the very university will soon award Kwame McCoy a professorship too.

 

 

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