Governments like humans make judgments on people

Feb 21, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I get requests all the time and the words are generally the same – “Freddie when are you going to write your memoir,” and the answer is always the same – “not when I am alive.”
After more than 50 years of praxis and 34 years of media presence, my memoir needs to be what all memoirs are, a tell-all story. But you cannot do that in Guyana. You will get thousands of libel writs. Can you imagine, I was threatened with libel for simply writing that my parents knew the grandparents of a well-known African rights activist? Can there be a greater absurdity in this country?
What I plan to do is find time to write it and leave it with my daughter to do a posthumous publication. In that way I will expose some of the world’s most depraved and dark minds that dwell in this land.
I have seen too much pathological depravities, insane hypocrisy and flaky character traits in this country to leave these dimensions of Guyanese life unrecorded. I wish there wasn’t the libel threat and I could do my autobiography. I owe it to my wife, daughter and the thousands of people who during the past 50 years once told me – “I admire you.”
This unknown country (maybe not anymore with those oil finds), underdeveloped, and small in population, has produced frightening minds you have to look hard to find elsewhere. I once wrote a few months ago that not even among extreme right-wing white racists you find the kind of hypocrisies that overflow in this country.
For the past 50 years I have seen people shouting down the Burnham, Hoyte, Jagan, Jagdeo, Ramotar, Granger, Ali governments and these people have minds that are far less tolerant than the actors in those seven governments. This has been the story of my life and the life of Guyana.
I find it utterly reprehensible that people would choose to publicly form themselves into associations and organisations, make devastating accusations against powerful politicians in government, condemn policies of central and local governments but with a barefaced superior stance see themselves as superior so you cannot put their activism under scrutiny. When you do that, they want to sue for libel, they pressure the media house you write for and they cultivate hatred. These are terrible humans that have no place in a free world.
The title of this column is instructive. It says governments come to conclusion about people and groups in society just like we judge our fellow citizens. That is a fact of life. I remember about 30 years ago, I approached the CEO of a private hospital to employ a medical doctor.
The CEO stared at me and told me that the gentleman cannot be associated with his hospital because he has no credibility. I was told he imbibed too much and was consistently drunk. The issue here was credibility. Credibility does wonderful and effective things for a person and organisation going through life.
You influence people and you get to change their viewpoint when you possess credibility. Here is an example before I come to the Guyana government and its detractors. John cannot get me to vote for Abuja to be the president of the organisation to protect animals when Abuja gets on television and eulogises the qualities of his friend Sunil when Sunil is a racist and women abuser.
The point is simple – John has no credibility in my eyes because he has no moral standard by which he judges other humans. In more than 50 years of praxis I have made the point to countless colleagues of mine that if you are a moral fraud and practice double standards, then governmental leaders are going to dismiss with contempt the criticism you make against them.
My uncle, Dr. Leslie Mootoo, once told me that President Burnham told him that some of his (Burnham) critics are devils in disguise. Former Commissioner of Police, Laurie Lewis, said to me about a fierce critic of Burnham: “what are you doing with that man; he is nobody to talk about?”
So we come down to the Government of Guyana since August 2020. No one in the hierarchy of the corridors of power is going to listen to those who they feel have no credibility. Often, I will hear people who are well placed in the corridors of power saying to me, “they now find their voice.”
It doesn’t matter how poignant and justified your criticism is, governmental leaders are going to refuse to consult you and discuss their policies with you if they know you are intolerant and arrogant and have no credibility. That is a fact of life.
(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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