I told David Hinds he was mad

Apr 27, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

David Hinds and I were on the lawns of Channel 9 studio waiting for our interview programme to begin. This was in July 2015, if my memory serves me correctly. As we were chatting, he made a disclosure that confused me. He said that he would be doing columns for the Chronicle. If you know David, ask him what my reaction was. Given my loud mouth, the decibels would not be minimal. I exclaimed, “Bhai yuh maad!”
I know David Hinds profoundly. He is one of the most maverick political activists this country has produced. I know David because I have a similar political temperament. A month before David’s revelation, I was chatting with Imran Khan, who is the Prime Minister’s point man for the state media. We were outside the AFC head office. The talk of course was the Chronicle.
I can distinctly recall telling him that in the new age we are in, the Chronicle has to carry front page news of the opposition PPP, to which he agreed. I distinctly recall that he politely asked me if I would like to write for the Chronicle. I diplomatically said no for one simple reason; it would not work out.
Now in 2016, David with his big quarrel with the Chronicle can contextualize my reaction that night at Channel 9. I would not have lasted beyond one column at the Chronicle and for one, single reason that is political in nature – the APNU+AFC leaders are not transformational people who are willing to take risks in changing the old landscape of Guyana.
I remind readers of a column I did on President Obama when I referenced the frustration of one of his biggest fans when he first became president – international superstar of the seventies and eighties, Joan Baez (see “Come from the Shadows: Joan Baez and Barack Obama,” Kaieteur News, January 18, 2015). Baez moved Obama down her list and put the Czech Republic founding father, Vaclav Havel, in front of him in terms of the possession of leadership qualities. For her, a leader must be prepared to take risks. For her Havel did, Obama won’t.
What happened in May 2015 was historic. Had the PPP remained in power, Jagdeo vicariously working through the sycophancy of Donald Ramotar would have literally destroyed Guyana. But the replacement was not a transformational one. This country rests on primitive fulcrums that cry out for a few dozen Havels. We don’t have those Havels. Even the WPA in the Coalition Government has self-destructed. Who or what is the WPA since 2015? Where is the WPA since 2015? As the months stretch into years, the WPA will lose its identity, only to be pathetically patronized by the larger parties in the 2020 elections.
This is the state of our politics after 2015. There are no signs that the PPP’s replacement will go beyond the usual – salary increase, renovated public infrastructure, etc; in other words things that any government would do, and that the PPP has done since 1992.
Repairing the line faults that have weakened this country the past sixty years is not within the immediate grasp of our current leaders. In fact, one can be harsh with this new government and say that in its one year in office, it has attracted more controversies, condemnations, suspicion and cynicism than the first year of Jagdeo’s presidency.
This is an unbelievable turn of events that not even a genius could have predicted. We are into eleven months of the new administration and the mistakes and flaws began before March or April 2016. They started early in the life of the Coalition Government. Who would have believed after 2015, a top official would chase a private media journalist out of a public place for simply reporting the truth?
Who would have believed crime would have become a nightmare to Guyanese after 2015? Who would have believed the complaints against police indiscretions would still haunt us after 2015. Who would have believed after 2015, the private media would have been accused by big wigs of the Coalition Government of trying to undermine it? Who would have believed Harmon-gate would have happened?
I was under no illusion that my Chronicle columns would have been problematic days after they started. My pen would not have excluded the President; as with David’s column, look what happened. It would not have excluded the Prime Minister; as with David’s column, look what happened. I had no grandiose belief that the state media would have targeted its competitors and we would have had a huge competition between KN, SN and Chronicle for hard-hitting news and explosive, iconoclastic, revisionist commentaries.

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