‘I’m ashamed of my country, my president, myself’

Mar 01, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Once this caption catches the eyes of Ravi Dev, he will even refuse to take an urgent call from his boss, Bobby Ramroop, and will read it because it will give him racial propaganda against Freddie Kissoon.
Dev will be disappointed. Those are not my words but of American Senator, John Mc Cain. He uttered those sentiments last week in reference to the American lack of military support for the Ukraine. Dev tried his propaganda stint on me when I wrote that after the 2006 election results I was ashamed to be an East Indian.
He found an ally in the PPP who filled the Chronicle and Guyana Times letter pages with cries of “Freddie Kissoon is ashamed of his race”.
Dev took my words completely out of context. He found partners among East Indian supremacists like Vassan Ramracha, Vishnu Bisram, Devanand Bhagwan, Annan Boodram (the “psychiatrist” who wrote in the Chronicle that I was mad) whose boredom in their foreign lands comes immediately to an end when they see anything Freddie Kissoon writes.
You can just imagine the mental resuscitation when they go to my page.
Of course you ignore these group-think victims, because you know what naturally comes from being an activist and a commentator in Guyana if you are not supportive of the PPP and its Indian bandwagon. People like Dev know me well. I couldn’t be bothered even for a fleeting second what Dev and his Brahmin/Chatree acolytes think of me.
Let me remind those who criticize me from their foreign homes. I am a first class citizen who feels no discrimination when I enter a restaurant or ride a mini-bus in my own country. No one in Guyana has ever insulted me yelling out that I should go back to India or called me a “Packie”.
I am not from India or Pakistan. And the last time I checked I am still Guyanese with the self-imposed description of a Caribbean man. Since time immemorial, public figures have declared they were ashamed to be part of a nationality that has let their nationality down with manifestations of egregious moral lapses.
John Mc Cain made his statement days after many Chelsea football fans said they were ashamed to be Chelsea fans after a group of Chelsea supporters repeatedly pushed away an African-French citizen from entering the train in a Paris subway.
When your race or your ethnic community behaves in disgraceful ways it stains the entire race group. I have read where Jews said they were ashamed to be Jews after horrible violence against Palestinians.
I have read where prominent African-American civil rights activists say they were ashamed to be African-Americans when sections of that community in the US descended to low conduct.
Those words have absolutely nothing to do with one’s rejection of one’s genetic make-up. It is simply a reassuring statement that people expect their own to preserve the dignity of their race and for members of that race to uphold their standards so high that they can be emulated by others.
I wrote my East Indian statement in the context of the 2006 election results. I thought Indians should have shown disgust with Jagdeo’s performance and that of the entire PPP party and voted for issues rather than put race as their priority when they marked their ballot.
Dev and those names I mentioned above would hardly understand the concept of the “issue” when voting. These people were born into a culture where race was supreme, even taking priority over God that they worshipped. Remember one of the Rwandan Archbishops who invited Tutsi refugees into his church then summoned the Hutu militia to slaughter them? He put race in front of God.
We have been voting in elections since 1957 on the basis of race. In that election, Dr. Jagan won the poll and history books can be consulted to show it was a straight ethnic consensus between the supporters of the PPP and PNC.
That was 57 years ago. Since then there has only been one exception of race voting – 2006 when substantial numbers of African Guyanese balloted for the new multi-racial party, the Alliance for Change.
The most brutal victim of race balloting in this country was the strangulation of the Working People’s Alliance in the 1992 poll. It was one of the most devastating electoral losses for a major party anywhere in the world.
As we enter into a new phase of Guyanese history with the grand coalition between the AFC and APNU, it would be morally depraved for Guyanese to continue to vote for race rather than for issues.

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