A counterproductive strategy and an identity crisis

Nov 14, 2013 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
I thank Dr. Asquith Rose and Mr. Chandra Deolall for their letter captioned “The wise always change their minds but fools do not” in the Kaieteur News of November 11, 2013. This letter, with its vituperous barrage against me, clearly proves the point I made when I wrote “It is pathetic when men from academia have to descend to name-calling to defend their position in a debate. It points to the hollowness of their argument and the futility of their position”.
I will not dignify their tirade with a response to the name-calling. However, I fully understand the psychology of Messrs. Rose and Deolall in attacking me personally rather than the points I raised in my letters. It is the standard strategy designed to intimidate and quiet opponents. Unfortunately, it is counterproductive. While it shuts down public debate, individuals who do not wish to be slandered in public show their true feelings in the privacy of the ballot box, and this is where Mr. Granger’s party has been failing since 1992. In any case, I am not one to be intimidated by name-calling or by individuals with “Dr.” before their name or “Esq.” after their name.
Let us look closely at this latest letter by Dr. Asquith Rose and Chandra Deolall, Esq. Apart from its nasty personal attacks, it shows a crisis of identity on the part of the writers. Is it written by one person or two persons, or are these two individuals, Rose and Deolall, appending their names to a letter written by someone else? They can’t seem to decide whether to use the personal pronoun “I” or “we”. Any first form high school student in Guyana knows that when the writer is “I’, only one person can be associated with that, not two. And when “we” are the writers, it begs the question – who is writing on whose behalf?
In my first letter which initially irked Dr. Rose, I raised the question – how credible is Dr. Rose now as a messenger? After reading Dr. Rose and Mr. Deolall’s tirades, readers can decide for themselves. As for Mr. Deolall, I have seen better cocks crowing in their time on behalf of the PNC. They rise and fall like the flow of the tides, starting with prominent Indian lawyer of his time, Mr. Jai Narine Singh, General Secretary of the PNC in 1957 and, more recently, Mr. Jerome Khan, Chairman of the PNC-R in 2002. After the next election we will soon find out who will be next to follow suit.
Harry Hergash

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