Fact-checking Frederick Kissoon, Vincent Alexander and Forbes Burnham

Jan 06, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

Kaieteur News – I wanted to ignore Vincent Alexander’s last letter on me in KN (Jan. 4) because I told myself who in this country would believe Alexander after five months of election rigging in which Alexander was one of the most conspicuous personalities voicing words and shaping his behaviour in support of electoral tampering.
I have changed my mind. I am now responding to Alexander through an open challenge. Once he answers my questions here factually, I will resign as a columnist from this newspaper, and consolidate my disappearance by asking the Kaieteur News management not to entertain any further correspondence from me in the future. Alexander wants KN to fact-check my columns and go so far as to ask editors to do fact checking as a policy. No doubt that would apply to the alternative facts that Alexander publishes in all four daily newspapers quite often.
Here is a plethora of questions, which Alexander must answer truthfully when juxtaposed with the facts and realities in contemporary Guyanese history and current impulses in Guyanese society.
1-Do you agree that Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham, had no legal authority to deny Walter Rodney a teaching job at UG because he, Burnham, was not legally elected in the general election of 1973 to be the prime minister?
2-Between the years of two general elections – 1973 and 1980 – you held the post of leader of the youth arm of the PNC, YSM, do you accept the fact that both elections were rigged by Forbes Burnham?
3-Do you agree with the fact that Burnham became a dictator when at his party’s congress at Sophia in 1974; he announced that his party was now the paramount institution in Guyana with jurisdiction over and above all state institutions?
4-Given all that President Burnham did to Guyana, do you not accept the fact that you are seen in vile ways by the Guyanese people by being the chairman of the Burnham Foundation?
5-Is it not a fact that Burnham was involved in the assassination of Walter Rodney and covered up the murder of Education Minister, Vincent Teekah?
6-On March 4, Region Four’s Returning Officer, Clairmont Mingo, was using false numbers which did not correspond with statements of poll (SOPs) in the possession of the APNU+AFC party, nine other opposition parties and the international observers. Yes or no?
7-On Friday, March 6, the Chief Elections Officer (CEO) wrote GECOM to convene a meeting for a declaration (only stopped by an injunction). There was an obligation by you to stop that meeting because the declaration was illegal. You did not join the other three PPP commissioners in opposing what the CEO did. Yes or no?
8-On Friday night of March 13, Mingo ignored the ruling of the Chief Justice and repeated his mumbo jumbo at the head office of GECOM in Kingston. It is not factual that Mingo continued his rigging?
9-You tabled a motion to GECOM to accept the declaration as it stood by the March 13 tabulation. Wasn’t that your acceptance of rigging as you saw and knew from your days in the YSM.
10-As a GECOM Commissioner whose obligation was to conduct transparent and legal elections with the acceptance of legal results, you wrote to the five visiting CARICOM Prime Ministers in your capacity as head of the Year of the People of African Descent requesting them to understand that Guyana’s problems go way beyond election and that must be their focus. They rightly ignored you because they viewed your intervention as hypocrisy. While asking them to help Guyana you were at the same time, as a GECOM commissioner, helping to destroy Guyana. True or false?
11-In a letter on me dated November 1, 2020 (KN) you wrote that National Service was not compulsory. It is just another example of my untruths. It was compulsory for UG students, trainee nurses and successful scholarship holders. I am accusing you of being an unmitigated, excessive, compulsive liar.
12-In that same November 1 letter you stated that in 1973 you were a student in Moscow so you couldn’t have held the position of chairman of the YSM. In your letter on me dated January 4, you informed readers from 1979 to 1985 you were in Moscow as a student. How many years were you then a student? You must be Russia’s most enduring student – 13 years. So when were you head of the YSM with the man we nicked named “Bowtie Jesus” as your deputy? “Bowtie Jesus” was President Granger’s personal friend whom he installed at UG.
13- Did you see the SOPs of the APNU+AFC? They lost the 2020 election.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

---

---