People I know

Mar 20, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Al Pacino is among a list of ten artists drawn from around the world that I would put as the best talent I have seen on film. I always wondered why I chose “People I know” as my favourite Pacino movie. I even bought the DVD for my daughter. Actually the film comes close to run-of-the-mill stuff, without any flair or subtlety or sophistication to the plot, but it is the Pacino film I prefer.
The reason has to be Freudian. The overall theme of the film is that people are not what you think they are. I don’t need an Al Pacino ‘B’ grade movie to tell me that. But still the film has a subliminal message – people will always be found in places where others are deceived into thinking they are positive humans. I think it is because there are deep aspects to my personal life, I have chosen “People I Know” as my favourite Pacino flick.
I was reminded the other day in the Kaieteur News offices that I am still to write my memoirs. If I write my memoirs there will be two opposing kinds of reactions. To bat safely, I will have to evade historical facts and philosophical and moral indictments of PEOPLE I KNOW (my emphasis). It will be a boring read. Guyanese will laugh at me and inquire why I wrote with such unexciting aridity. If I was to speak my mind on the PEOPLE I KNOW, I will spend every day of my life until I die, walking up the steps of the High Court to respond to thousands of lawsuits. I may tell the truth and the truth will hurt many who sit in high places, on high moral pedestals, and many who are supposed to be icons for the present and future generations to look up to.
I thought of this Pacino movie when I read that the President said that after the over 50 forensic audits into governmental entities are complete, foreign investigators will be brought in. The President went on to state that he is in favour of local personnel, but there may be the need to have foreign people. I take a different position. I don’t want to see any local police or local financial expert or judicial investigator, period.
Let me digress a bit. I never thought I could entertain thoughts of opposing the eradication of the Privy Council in London to replace it with our own Caribbean Court of Justice. At the philosophical and cultural levels, I am a quintessential Caribbean man. Life without the Caribbean presence in me is something I never contemplated and I will never think of.
But my attitude to the Privy Council came under serious strain when I spent five years in the High Court defending President Jagdeo’s libel writ and the contempt of court writ filed by Juan Edghill. There and then I began to understand why the Trinidadian and Jamaican people are hesitant about stopping the white man in London from hearing appeals from Caribbean lower courts. Maybe they think those British judges have more integrity and independence than our Caribbean judges. I don’t blame them.
What I saw in those five years scared me about the Caribbean Court of Justice. In another article I will have more to say about the court papers for division of property by the former wife of anti-colonial icon and practicing attorney, Ashton Chase.
Let’s return to the foreign investigators.
My contention is that in an extremely sensitive issue like the decision to charge and prosecute former high-level functionaries of the former PPP Government, I have no faith in scores of our police officers, financial experts and judicial officials. Don’t get me wrong. I never used the word “ALL.” I wrote the word, SCORES.” And those “SCORES” will come from those very professions I referred to a few lines above.
There is a complex, labyrinthine web that permeates this society in frightening ways. I am not only frightened, but live in deep dread about only Guyanese police, Guyanese financial experts and Guyanese judicial officials being left to make the decision to decide if wrongdoing was done, after they research the findings of the forensic audits.
I repeat what I believe in, and I hold that belief the way a churchgoer accepts the existence of God – there should be foreign investigators who should be given the authority to make pronouncements on the violation of the law during the life of the past regime.
My dear readers, you think you know the PEOPLE I KNOW? Sorry if I sound chauvinistic, but you don’t. This is a sinful, devilish, immoral country. I sound religious, even though I am not.

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