Those women groups: Psychological mess in Guyana

Jun 08, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – In my Friday, June 4, 2021 piece, “Women groups are politicising and using race in exposing sexual harassment,” I outlined the some factual information about the signatures below to reinforce my point that those signatures are politically motivated because of anti-PPP attitudes and association and relation with opposition parties like the WPA and PNC.
Just to remind readers about the situation. Last Wednesday, these women groups consisting of the usual suspects (by now everyone in Guyana know who these pretenders are) penned a letter in the newspapers calling for the head of SOCU, Superintendent of Police, Fazil Karimbaksh, to be investigated for allegations of sexual harassment. But weeks before, Karimbaksh’s boss, the head of the Police Service Commission, Paul Slowe, was accused too.
These so-called women rights activists chose to ignore Slowe’s case but wrote a long letter highlighting alleged misconduct by Karimbaksh. In response to this egregious manifestation of double standards, I composed my column exposing them for using political and ethnic criteria in their work.
Some of those facts included Joycelyn Dow being the common-law wife of Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine and Bonita Bone who was the common-law wife of Ronald Waddell. I got a deluge of emails asking me how I can omit other facts that would have made my case stronger.
Well, all I can say is thank you for the additional information and put it down to forgetfulness because of age. Here are some details I left out. A signature was from Josephine Whitehead. She is the wife of the infamous Henry Jeffrey who argued week after week in his Stabroek News column that the election result could not be a genuine reflection of how people voted because a bloated list cannot guarantee a free poll.
I replied several times to Jeffrey’s asininity with the point that the bloated list has to translate into actual, observable, detectable anomalies so the conclusion of fraud can be proven. I even confronted him in one of my columns with the observation of Peter Wickham that Barbados’ electoral roll has the same high numbers as Guyana’s but there has never been a rejection of an election results in Barbados.
I have been informed that Jeffrey was given an ultimatum by the Stabroek News to prove election fraud or refrain from mentioning same in his commentaries. He has since disappeared from the Stabroek News. I say good riddance to you know what.
I got an email reminding me that one of the signatures is Dr. Alissa Trotz who is an executive in the organisation, Overseas Friends of the WPA. Trotz is an intriguing Canadian woman that Guyanese need to know something of. That something has to do with her presence in the Stabroek News. For over a decade now, she edits a section of the newspaper titled “In the diaspora” in which each week, she invites a commentator to do a column.
“In the diaspora” has featured everything under the sun except two subjects that have never appeared on its page – the APNU+AFC’s flippant disregard for the no-confidence vote and the five months of election rigging. Can anyone tell me that this was just an oversight? It was not.
Both dramas played out for long periods. The NCV did not result in the summoning of a general election until 14 months after. The election rigging lasted five months. This gave the lady time to find academics who would offer their condemnations of the two travesties. But was the lady interested? One reason could be that Canada is cold in December and since the NCV was in December, the internet and telephones weren’t working for her to make contact with Guyanese academics wherever they were/are.
As a reaction to my column condemning them for politicising their anti-sexual harassment activism, they penned another letter to the press this time naming Paul Slowe. Guyanese need to come to grips with the psychological mess this country has been in over several decades now. If it wasn’t for my column, these so-called women rights activists would not have publicised the allegations against Slowe leaving only Karimbaksh’s name in the public domain.
This psychological mess is manifested in extreme ethnic and political bias that is destroying this nation. Civil society is riveted with hypocrisy. This hypocrisy isn’t your run-of-the mill kind. It is dangerous, almost evil. Can one imagine in any other country than Guyana, there is a human rights organisation that never uttered a word on a national election that was being rigged in front of the eyes of the world? These women rights groups were silent when a 16-year-old girl and her grandmother were beaten by PNC thugs. Why? Because they are Indian?
(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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