Ralph Ramkarran and the danger of alternative facts

Jul 31, 2017 Letters

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Dear Editor,
If there is anyone among the world’s seven billion people who has perfected the art of alternative facts is a Guyanese lawyer living in Guyana by the name of Ralph Ramkarran. Writing in his column yesterday, Ramkarran wrote; “Freddie Kissoon and Kaieteur News continue their decade long personal vendetta against me because of an apology he and KN were forced to make to me more than twenty years ago.”
Those words of Ramkarran constitute alternative facts. Since there is no scientific object and there can be no scientific object named alternative facts, then alternative facts are fictions. The KN did not apologise to Ramkarran. Out of a harmless article he threatened libel. Persuaded by Khemraj Ramjattan not to sue, he identified a figure of $300,000 and an apology. But behind my back and that of the publisher’s, he got the then editor, Nills Campbell to let him write the apology himself. In that apology, he turned around and libeled me by shaping the wording in such a way as to attack my character.
The publisher Mr. Glenn Lall was out at the time. On his return I showed the scurrilous derogation of me in that apology to him. Ten years after, Ramkarran was at it again; threatening libel. He wrote to Mr. Lall. Whatever disagreement he had with Lall to cause him to write, he did remonstrate with Lall for what Ramkarran said was Lall’s promise to him to fire me. It meant that before that communication was sent to Lall, he had a discussion with Lall on the need for Lall to remove me as a columnist.
Now twenty years after, Ramkarran is at again. In a letter dated July 21, he again sought to take libel action against me. His missive is riddled and saturated with mischief-making that caused KN to use the description, “attempts at dishonesty.” I intend to write the Bar Association and the Guyana Press Association to address the contents of that July 21 missive.
In his column yesterday, Ramkarran observed; “Freddie Kissoon is like a life sore on my foot, dormant with treatment, but which explodes in suppuration occasionally.” Can any human on Planet Earth believe this man? Had I written those words about Ramkarran, I would have been given an immediate libel writ. Ramkarran in that article says I am on a hate campaign. Had I accused Ramkarran of that, the libel writs would have flowed like fountain water. I am not going to sue Ramkarran because he is not even an infinitesimal footnote in the annuals of Guyanese politics. He was always a figure of secondary importance in the PPP and Guyanese politics. He now lives in obscurity rescued by the Stabroek News with a weekly column. But even that instrument cannot resuscitate his political life.
Ramkarran over the past twenty years has had an obsession with me that I have never seen in another Guyanese. And I think I know why. Because he has lived a political life of unanswered questions and insincerities that I have exposed him for. I wrote that as soon as he became Chairman of Guyana Airways Corporation (GAC), he bought a shiny Mercedes Benz. He replied to say it was an old model. Today with Google, we can tell which year his model came out if he sends us the serial number. I bet he wouldn’t do that. Fazal Khan, then CEO of GAC told me as chairman, he was entitled to free travel which he made extensive use of
In one of my exposures of him, former PPP stalwart, Malcolm Harrypaul added to my analysis by describing the authoritarian instincts of Ramkarran when he was Janet Jagan’s favourite. Nevertheless, the same Jagan overlooked him and literally gave the presidency to Bharrat Jagdeo. His July 21 letter was a manifestation of the panic he was in. It was generated by my July 18 column in which I reminded the nation what he did to Dr. Mark Kirton at UG when he, Ramkarran was UG’s legal advisor.
He advised the university not to accept two orders from Justice Winston Patterson stopping the university from rescinding the appointment of Kirton as acting Vice Chancellor. Maybe Ramkarran is rekindling his political life for the 2020 elections and he does not want his inglorious, political life of the past forty years to be featured in the public sphere. In order to stop me then he did what he is wont to do- threaten libel. He failed this time because as the Kaieteur News termed it, his July 21 letter of complaint is characterized by “attempts at dishonesty.” Finally, he has praised a letter in support of him published in KN last Wednesday in which the writer T. Karran uses the caste system to put me in a lower caste than Ramkarran. I know who wrote that letter. What a sad mind! At a later date, I will reveal that person’s name.
Frederick Kissoon

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