The David Patterson accusation

Aug 17, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – My Sunday column described a torrid exchange I had with former AFC Minister, and current AFC’s General Secretary, David Patterson, last Friday evening on the parapet outside my friends’ home right next door to David’s party headquarters.
It was a tempestuous affair in which David showed acidic anger over my continuous critical attitude to the AFC. Prior to the 2020 elections, the AFC bigwigs were livid over relentless condemnations in my columns of their use of state power.
I know I was a scornful target of these bigwigs because they would say things about me in the presence of many second-tier leaders who come back to tell me not as gossipers but with an admirable mind that went something like this – “Freddie I know what you say about the AFC is true and I know how you feel but tone it down, nuh maan.” Many of these second-tier leaders never held an animosity towards me because during the 2015 campaign we became friends.
Of this group, I would count Leonard Craig and Michael Carrington as having been very independent-minded people in the executive of the AFC. Carrington was a parliamentarian. Craig was Deputy General-Secretary. I know both of these gentlemen many, many moons ago before they ever dreamt of a political career.
What I hated and still hate up to this day is the morbid barefacedness of these AFC kings and queens who refuse to see how power-intoxicated they were and the depraved political culture they exhibited, far worse than any cluster of PPP and PNC ministers from 1964 to May 2015.
I was so livid with David Patterson’s stance against me last Friday that had it not been for the need to feed my dog her dinner, I would have stayed hours and hours educating Patterson on what are the obligations of people in the exercise of power.
Patterson made several accusations against me that Friday evening which over the course of time, I will discuss with the Guyanese people. Guyanese read my columns wherever they are and out of that comes an obligation. I believe there are positive opinions of me out there and I have an obligation to dispel suspicions these people have of me. In Lockean philosophy it is called obligation.
I will now elaborate on one of the open castigations of Patterson which he stated that Friday night. It is about some type of compact I have with Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo. It has been circulating around PNC layers and their supporters that I made some covenant with PPP leaders. David Hinds is the driver of this train. In one of his recent insane Facebook cries, he told his fellow insane listeners that he knows I am not a racist but I am beholden to a group of racist Indians.
This is an ugly manifestation of ugly minds from people who cannot see that some humans are not easily bought because they love their country. When I was researching the mayhem in Buxton between 2002 and 2005, Tacuma Ogunseye wrote in the Stabroek News that I was in the pay of President Jagdeo.
I stood up for my country from March to July in 2020 when the votes of citizens were being cast aside in a general election. An educated woman like Dr. Melissa Ifill accused me of working for my reward. She wrote, “I wish Mr. Kissoon good luck in what appears to be his current desperate angling for earnings.”
This is a funny life. In the period where Dr. Ifill and I took different positions on the March election, she earned more than her previous salary because in that period, she became the Deputy Vice Chancellor of UG. In that very period, I remained with one job only and in August 2021 still have that one job. In response to Dr. Ifill’s belief that I have a money-driven mind, I did inform her that it was a huge irony that in fact, I earned less in 2020. If I was angling for earnings, I wished it did come my way.
So here is David asserting that I have something going with Mr. Jagdeo. For the record, I have only spoken with two leaders in government since August 2020 – the President and the AG, Anil Nandlall. As stated before, the President asked in what ways I would like to serve my country. The AG asked me the same thing. My response to the President was that younger people should be given the opportunity to serve. I told the AG, if he offers me a job, his enemies will shout from the rooftop that he gave Freddie Kissoon “a big wuk.” I gracefully declined.

(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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