My side of the correspondence with Yog Mahadeo

Dec 15, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – In my Friday column, I made mention of Dr. Yog Mahadeo, a prominent name in the land who became even more known for his anti-rigging stance in the March 2020 election.
Yog has replied by personal correspondence. I will have to retain that in my secret compartment but his email was one that I appreciate. What I will do now is to cite a sentence in my reply to Yog that when I reflected on it, I want the public to know what I said. It was indeed an exaggeration but the ancient Greek gods know that in my heart I will always feel that anger that made me penned that statement.
Then there was a statement I made to Yog about the essential substance of my activism that is more than 50 years old. The sentence went like this: “My entire life has been spent in political activism where I have seen double standards worse than Nazi Germany (no apology).
The comparison with Nazi Germany is very untidy but the anger is so volcanic in me that again I make no apology for the comparison.” Now for the statement in my email to Yog, I wrote the following: “I have never accepted that my politics should be against governments only but all types in society.”
This is the essential fulcrum on which rest my 50 odd years of social and political activism. My praxis has been directed against all types of moral turpitude in all types of corners, not against the State only. Here is something that is revealing and I will add a spice of humour to it so it will ease the shock of readers if it hurts their head. It happened years ago.
I read in the Stabroek News, a letter in which some employees noted that Muneshwer’s hardware store on Water Street required them to bring their own toilet paper and hand-washing liquid. The contents of that letter drove a spear into my soul. This is the kind of cruelties that gave birth to my dream of changing the world. Naturally, I expressed my feeling on the alleged behavioural ugliness in my column.
I remember I was leaving the Kaieteur News office when Adam Harris got up and said to me, “Freddie, before you go, I want to talk to you about a complaint I got from…” (he called the name of one of the family’s patriarchs but I cannot remember it). A big, big quarrel broke out. In the office was the deputy editor, Nigel McKenzie, and the CEO of the State Assets Recovery Agency, Aubrey Retmyer.
It was a shouting match in which many “effs” were used with excessive latitude. I told Adam that I was not interested in what the Muneshwer family had to say and what they thought of me and I am not discussing the issue with him. In a rage, he flew into my face as if he wanted to physically hit me. Adam is older than me and a bit sickly so I knew if I had pushed him, it was a murder charge I was facing.
I quietly walked away and never discussed the Muneshwer issue. It was the ugliest quarrel Adam and I ever had after working for more than two decades together at the newspaper. The complaint struck at the heart of who I am and what drives me.
I wasn’t going to listen to what the Muneshwer family had to say. Their obligation was to reply to me and the Stabroek News. That is what Adam should have told them. Years after, I met one of the patriarchs at Mike’s Pharmacy in the village of Bel Air. I ignored his comment.
The lesson of this war with Adam is that I believe wrongs must be righted and wrongs are not confined to governmental action only. In my correspondence with Yog, I mentioned how I feel when a section of the press keeps insisting that Dr. Vincent Adams should have been retained as head of the EPA.
I told Yog, the civil service and the public sector should not employ CEOs that are in the leadership of political parties. Which government in the world is going to put such a CEO in such a sensitive State job and that CEO is in the leadership of an opposition party.
I made it clear to Yog that I was deeply disappointed that up to this day, independent minds have not rejected the newspaper’s insistence because it opens up the floodgates. But unfortunately, this is who we are in Guyana. We criticise the government only. In so doing, we encourage the monsters at the gate.
(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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My side of the correspondence with Yog Mahadeo

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