My dog almost bit off a man’s head outside the AFC’s office

Jun 01, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – Each day when I go to the seawall and the National Park with my dog, I would stop at my friends’ little snackette right next door to the AFC’s head office. Dawn and Raymond Persaud are my personal friends.
Last Saturday afternoon was no exception. As I drove up, I saw something unusual at the AFC’s headquarters. The place has been a ghost town since the APNU+AFC lost the March 2020 election. No one is ever there.
There were actually cars and people outside the office. There was a tent with some people under it. Raymond approached the car and told me that the AFC has a fund-raising “curry lime.” As Raymond left, long-standing AFC activist, Albert Crowell, who provided security for me during the 2015 campaign came up to the driver’s window joking with me with out-of-control decibels. He didn’t know my dog was sitting next to me.
The dog jumped at him. While the dog was about to eat Cromwell, something unusual happened. The clock was rewound to the long years prior to 2015 when David Patterson and I were very personal friends. David came out of the AFC building yelling to me, “Freydaay, Freydaay, come in maan, come in, Freydaay come in.” And he went on and on
I watched as David with decibels that matched Crowwell’s kept insisting I come in and join the lime. I drove away. I felt a tinge of sadness and contempt as I watched David and my foot mashed the accelerator.
This man and so many of the big wigs in the AFC and I were very close personal friends. David Patterson and Khemraj Ramjattan were my intimate buddies. We limed, socialised and struggled in politics to change our country into having a blissful future. In the 2015 election battle, I spoke at more campaign meetings than any AFC speaker.
Then something happened in the second half of 2015, and I became a complete non-entity and a no-body to Khemraj Ramjattan and David Patterson. The AFC acquired state power and I never heard back from my two friends. I never got a call to attend a function, a birthday party, a quiet lime, a coffee, nothing. I never even got a telephone call enquiring as to how I was doing.
Here now are two things I never revealed in these columns before. I know one day I will have to write on them, and I am doing so now. One relates to Cathy Hughes, the other to Khemraj Ramjatttan. In relation to Ramjattan, I only told Norman Brown, PNC activist in the UK about the incident during a recent interview.
One day, during the early times of the AFC in power, I went to see a close buddy of mine, Leonard Craig, who was the personal aide to Minister Ramjattan at the Public Security Ministry (now Home Affairs Ministry). The guard hut is right in front of the entrance. The rank told me to wait while she informs Craig. Going up the stairs with his three-piece suit was Minister Ramjattan.
He looked at me as if I was a complete stranger and asked formally, “are you getting through.” Ramjattan didn’t greet me, didn’t call my name, didn’t smile. Anyone from another planet who witnessed that encounter would never believe that just a year before Ramjattan and I were close comrades.
Now Cathy Hughes. A retired friend from the US invested a small sum in agriculture and came home for a week to ink the deal. He stayed at the Georgetown Club. He told me he would love nothing better if he could walk across next door and swim at the Colgrain pool, which lies in the compound of Colgrain House, which is Mrs. Hughes’ ministry.
Since I knew Hughes I told my friend, I doubt that would be a problem. He asked me out of the supposed knowledge that I knew the AFC leaders closely. I texted Hughes. She took three days to reply and said she could not see me since she was busy. But she will get in touch. She did three days after and said she cannot meet because she has to attend a birthday. It was 10 days after my first text, she agreed to meet. By then my friend had gone. It is only now through this column, if Mrs. Hughes reads it, she will know what I wanted to talk to her about. Let me close by boldly stating no PPP Minister would have snubbed me the way Hughes and Ramjattan did. Dominic Gaskin and Winston Jordan also thought after 2015, that I was a non-entity. More on what they did some other time.
(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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