The PPP will never allow Freddie Kissoon to determine its Presidential candidate

Aug 30, 2018 Letters

---

Dear Editor,

Freddie Kissoon has got some nerve, trying to desecrate the character of my friend and colleague, fellow Member of Parliament Gail Teixeira. She is well-respected, dignified, cultured, highly educated, and one of the leading candidates to replace Granger as President in 2020. More importantly, she is a woman with a vision and a patriotic Guyanese.
In his usual condescending way, Kissoon uses a statement made by the PPP General Secretary to disqualify Gail Teixeira’s electability on account of her age. Here’s my take on this to show just how hypocritical Freddie Kissoon really is: Since when does it matter to Kissoon what Bharrat Jagdeo says? He has never agreed with the former President before on anything. Further, with Guyana having a 72 year-old retiree as President, and other senior citizens in his Cabinet, the likes of 72 year-old Dr. Rupert Roopnarine, 70 year-old Moses Nagamootoo, 72 year-old Noel Holder, and 69 year-old Carl Greenidge; and also with the appointments of 80 plus year-old Dr. Clive Thomas as the Head of SARA, 84 year-old Justice James Patterson as GECOM Chairman, and others too numerous to mention but I’m sure you get the drift. President Granger has now ensured that a person’s age could no longer be an issue in public life. In any event, Gail Teixeira is much younger and better-looking than all those mentioned above.

In his diatribe, Kissoon also references the Tennessee Williams’ play, “Orpheus Descending” to describe Teixeira. This time he readily admits to not being a literary critic, as “Orpheus Descending” is about trying to live bravely and honestly in a fallen world. Ironically, this sums up the character of Gail Teixeira. Living one’s life according to one’s convictions and bravely defending them is thought to be something honourable. But only the venomous mind of Freddie Kissoon could view it otherwise.
This self-righteous individual has a long-standing axe to grind with Gail Teixeira, so it is necessary for me to debunk some assertions made in his column.
Freddie was opposed to her being appointed to serve on the Council of the University of Guyana, and blames the PPP for his dismissal. The truth is, as stated in a press statement in February 2011, the UG Council did not renew Kissoon’s contract by a majority vote on two grounds: He was past retirement age, and had produced no research or academic publications in the 20 years he worked there. His columns in the Kaieteur News did not count.
By the late 1980s, both Teixeira and Kissoon served on the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy (PCD), for the PPP and WPA respectively, a body that was set up with all the opposition political parties to push for free and fair elections after decades of dictatorship under the PNC. Back then, even the WPA could not handle Kissoon and soon banned him from PCD meetings after it was recognized that he would prematurely break up the PCD. But his bitterness festered and has since turned to pure hatred for anyone associated with the PPP. Hence his daily anti-PPP rhetoric in the Kaieteur News.
The WPA however, ultimately in 1991, broke up the PCD with their demand that firstly, Cheddi Jagan should not be the Presidential Candidate as Afro-Guyanese would revolt against an Indian leader, and, when they subsequently acquiesced, they demanded that Dr. Jagan could be the Presidential Candidate, but the PPP could only have 13% of the seats in Parliament regardless of how many they won. We all know how that turned out.
Gail Teixeira was involved in the thick of all these battles and yes, she fought on principle against such opportunism on behalf of her Party. Time has also shown that the PPP was right, as look at the WPA today… totally compromised and in bed with the PNC, the party which assassinated their leader, Dr. Walter Rodney according to the findings of the 2016 Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Dr. Walter Rodney’s assassination.

Let us not be fooled, Freddie Kissoon has his own agenda. He has openly declared his preference for my other friend and colleague, the former PPP/C Attorney General, Anil Nandlall, who gave him $50,000 while he was building his house. Kissoon said so himself in a previous column. It therefore seems that Kissoon wants to crush any potential threat to his choice for the PPP Presidential Candidate. I expect that other uncomplimentary articles will soon be written by Freddie Kissoon on those that stand in the way of his choice, but let me make this pellucidly clear… Anil Nandlall, if elected, would be an excellent Presidential Candidate as well as any of the other front-runners, but this decision must be the collective wisdom of the Party. The PPP will never allow Freddie Kissoon to determine who its Presidential candidate should be.

Although Gail Teixeira is a household name in Guyana, not much is known about this lady who has dedicated so much of her life to the land of her birth and its people. She is not one to blow her own trumpet.
From the early age of 14, Gail migrated to Canada with her parents. Years later, she met Dr. Cheddi Jagan while he was visiting Toronto in 1976. Obviously impressed with the work she was doing in support of the People’s Progressive Party, Dr. Jagan, after consultation with the PPP Secretariat, invited her to return to Guyana to be his Personal Secretary. The rest is history. Cheddi Jagan must have seen something in this young woman that made him make such a bold move. Throughout the years that followed, the astuteness of Dr. Jagan and the PPP has not been let down by the choice they made, as they gained a woman who has been trustworthy, disciplined and loyal to the party, and dedicated to the people of Guyana, the country of her birth.
The Gail Teixeira I know never flinched when the issues of principle were at stake, even when she was attacked both physically and publicly, as some people did not then understand the position of the People’s Progressive Party. Years later the PPP has now been vindicated.

Freddie Kissoon maliciously and falsely attacks Gail Teixeira as an “ideological Stalinist”. In fact, Stalinism died since 1953. The newly formed PPP of 1950 never supported or defended Stalinism and Gail Teixeira was a toddler when that era ended, thankfully. As an adult she has always stood up for human rights and the respect and dignity of people. Her life has been dedicated to Parliamentary Democracy. But by now, we should all recognize that Freddie Kissoon is deliberately dropping these loaded terms for a reason; he is the ‘Pied Piper’ playing to someone else’s tune and sending signals to anti-PPP forces, both internal and external, that Gail Teixeira would not be acceptable. These forces know too well that it was the PPPC – despite the “communist bogey” accusations of the 1960s – that moved this country forward as never before in the 23 years of its successive administrations as it did when in government in the early 60s. These same forces are now watching closely at the demise of Guyana again under an undemocratic, inept and corrupt APNU+AFC Coalition government.
In his column, Freddie Kissoon as usual, praises the late PNC Leader, Forbes Burnham, and demonizes Janet Jagan. Kissoon seems to have a fetish about Mrs. Jagan as he repeatedly attacks her, a great woman leader of Guyana, who is recognized internationally as one of the revolutionary women of the 20th century. In this case Kissoon uses this to opportunistically attack Gail Teixeira. Kissoon refuses to accept that in 1997, Guyanese voted overwhelmingly for Janet Jagan at the age of 77, giving her an even larger majority than her husband received in 1992. He conveniently ignores the fact that Burnham robbed the people of this country of their dignity, and the right to have their voices expressed freely and fairly at elections held in 1968, 1973 and 1980. This was repeated by Hoyte in 1985. When Burnham died, he left the country broken, fractured, and on its way to bankruptcy. The historian David Granger and the former PNC Minister of Finance, Carl Greenidge can both testify to this, but that would never happen.

HARRY GILL
PPP/C Member of Parliament

---

---