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These are my best columns for 2020

Jan 10, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – 9 – “Holed up with my wife: Does music have ethnicity,” – Sunday, April 26. About how closer I came to my wife after 41 years of marriage, being imprisoned with her in our house 24 hours a day because of the pandemic and the restrictions, it brought. In that column, I dedicated to her a composition of my favourite writer of popular music, Burt Bacharach, “I’m a better man,” sung by a gentleman whose voice I loved, growing up as a teenager in Wortmanville, Engelbert Humperdinck. In that piece I reflected on growing up in south Georgetown, loving all kinds of music including what my friends in Wortmanville referred to a “White people music.”
8 – “The National Park bosses stopped me from feeding a stray cat,” – Sunday, February 9. It was clear to me that as my exposure of the degeneracy and bankruptcy of APNU+AFC misfits intensified; I would feel the heat of the small minds of those who wield authority on behalf of such fools. I cycled in the park for over 10 years where my cycle was kept.
First, they stopped me from leaving the cycle there. I complained to the National Park chairperson, Dr. Raquel Thomas, but this lady was oozing elitist power that she refused to talk to me when I approached her at the funeral of a mutual friend. One day, I will meet her and tell her about illusions of grandeur. After the cycle incident, they stopped me from feeding a poor, stray cat. Some people can have tiny minds.
7- “A song for me and the heroes I see from my window,” – Sunday, May 24. This was when the Caricom observed recount was underway and the containers containing the ballot boxes were stored at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre. My bedroom windows overlook the Centre because my house is high. Many times, it would be raining torrentially and those young men and women would be there throughout the nights and the early mornings to safeguard those boxes.
I would look at them from a distance, reflect on my youthful days when I fought for free and fair elections, and the painful consequences it brought as a youth and as a married man. Many times, I wished I was there but I was much older to brave that kind of weather. As I looked at them, I knew my days for radical activism was drawing to a close. In that column, I dedicated a song to me that tells the story of my life. Sung by the band, the Alan Parson Project, it is titled, “Limelight.”
6- “A helpless 16-year-old girl, her grandmother and three LGBT victims,” – Monday, September 21. This was about marauding gangs beating up East Indians in Region Five after the murder of two youths in the village of Cottonfield. David Granger and Joe Harmon went there and incited PNC supporters. The result was widespread attacks on East Indians.
5- “An appeal to the protestors; do not beat innocent people,” – Sunday March 8. Mark Benschop in a radio interview asked me why I didn’t condemn East Indians for beating up African persons after the rigging by the PNC looked that it would have succeeded and Indians took to the streets. I condemned the attack of an innocent African nurse in Region Three.
4- “Make a bust of the following persons,” – Wednesday, June 17. The persons named in that column are US Ambassador, Sarah-Ann Lynch; EU Ambassador, Fernando Ponz Canto; then UK High Commissioner, Greg Quinn; then Canadian High Commissioner, Lilian Chaterjee; Former Jamaican PM, Bruce Golding and former Barbadian PM, Owen Arthur (deceased). Guyana’s democracy was saved by these people. I believe then, as I do now, that we should have a collection of their busts placed in a popular spot in Guyana.
3 – “Electoral insanities unseen in modern times,” – Sunday, May 3.
2 – “What happened should never happen again in the world,” – Monday, August 3.
1- “We must never forget those five months in 2020,” – Sunday, August 30.
My three best columns for 2020 are those on the elections of March. I am still to recover from what we as Guyanese have been through last year. One has to understand at my age, I never thought we would see again, the PNC trying to achieve permanent power through rigged elections. I saw this drama for the entire period of my youthful days and even when I was in my thirties. It brought us the demonic rule of Forbes Burnham. From March 4, 2020, I saw this horror show playing out in front of me. This time I had a daughter that I was prepared to fight for.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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