Freddie erred on DeCaires but right on others

Feb 14, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,
I am pleased to read that Freddie Kissoon has acknowledged (Feb 12) that he unintentionally erred in penning (Feb 10) that Ms. Isabelle DeCaires did not condemn the attempting rigging of the 2020 elections. When I read Freddie’s critique that Ms. DeCaires did not condemn the rigging, I immediately knew he inadvertently erred because I remember very well her pieces slamming the bold attempts to rig the elections. Like Freddie, I implore Ms. DeCaires to continue her independence of thought in commenting on issues of national importance.
Isabelle was among a few of us who denounced the 2020 rigging and chastised the government for wanting to remain in office through rigging as well as censuring GECOM officials who were facilitating the rigging. She was not as vociferous and unrelenting as Freddie and myself and a few others, but she lent a scarce voice against those who sought to steal an election. Those who were mum and or came out in support of rigging wanted to maintain the status quo of coalition dominance and perhaps continuation of authoritarian rule that ended in 1992 with the country’s first democratic election.
Freddie is right to excoriate and deprecate Guyanese academics, rights activists, civil society, church figures, prominent others, and NGOs who (and that) were silent during the rigging. Freddie and I were among the few who chastised those who lost their voice during that five-month period of the attempted rigging. As Freddie repeatedly and accurately penned, they were silent because of race and political loyalty to a party. They did not demonstrate respect and love for democracy but to power and ethnic dominance. Regrettably, some of those who fought against rigging and the dictatorship between 1966 and 1992 supported or endorsed rigging in 2020.
Neither Freddie, nor I, nor several others who championed democracy between 1966 and 1992 and during those five months in 2020 were interested in power or which party would benefit from our activism and labour. And we ourselves were not beneficiaries. We supported the principle of the source of governance – power derives from the people through free and fair election. Many of those who were silent and or supported the coalition remain and or have become beneficiaries of those who fought for democracy; they continue to earn profits from government contracts and or big salary from state employment. They benefit either way regardless of which party in government – opportunistic political entrepreneurs as they care called by political scientists.
The non-political activists who championed democracy are left out in the cold. That is the nature of unaligned political activism. Freddie is right to call out and embarrass those who were silent during the onslaught against democracy.
Yours truly,
Vishnu Bisram

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