You have to defend yourself in a sadistic country

Aug 14, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – I have learnt with bitterness, angst, mental torture, hurtful reflections what a morally ugly society Guyana is. The sadism of banality and the banality of sadism permeate the social landscape of this nation and it began long, long before March 2020.

This is an extremely small minded society where people will react with twisted logic, brutal viciousness and an unforgiving mind if you dare expose just one of their frailties. Once you internalise the moral fault lines of the society you live in, then you acquire the strong and enduring capacity to defend and preserve your psychological integrity.

This is a society where you are compelled to defend yourself and beat your own drum. Don’t ever think that others will beat your drum for you. Don’t ever think that there aren’t others out there eager to swallow the ugliness that is propagated against you. It suits their purpose to be ugly-minded because they don’t like you for exposing them

Here is what I wrote in my column of July 1, 2022: “Let anyone in and out of this country produce just one editorial from the Stabroek News on the termination of my UG contract in December 2011 despite two weeks of strike and protest on the campus against the action; one word from the Guyana Human Rights Association on the dismissal that was ruled illegal by the Ombudsman; one word, from the Trade Union Congress on the dismissal even though my union which called the strike was a member of the TUC.”

Have you figured out since I wrote those words in July why this attitude was taken against me by the entities named above? Here is the answer. In my long career, I would have composed statements and analyses exposing some of their frailties.

It didn’t matter that at the time I was fighting for democracy and human rights. I was dispensable and sacrificed on the altar of a society with rotting minds. But I survived as you can see because I beat my own drum, defended myself and didn’t give a rabbit’s ass what people said about me.

So I say to the young ones in this country that want to call a spade a spade and do so publicly – don’t let untruths about you become part of the record. You have a duty to history to set the record straight.

Last December someone by the name of Charles Ceres wrote the following words about me in this newspaper: “a pseudo researcher, who is still to obtain his dream of post graduate qualifications.” I did not sue Ceres, whoever he is, because I didn’t consider him important in the society and believe people would pay any attention to him. But I did describe my post-graduate life.

The vilification will not stop because I express my mind about people, places and events in my country. And in expressing my mind on the subject that people living in the diaspora should not interview Guyanese when those interviewers don’t know what is taking place here, I received a Ceres-type condemnation.

The writer, Leyland Roopnaraine, a salesman of smoke detectors and fire extinguishers in Little Guyana in New York took umbrage at my position. In a letter in this newspaper of Thursday, August 11, 2022 he wrote: “Kissoon, who is not a political scientist, but claims to be one should realise that he is a very poor and mediocre political analyst.” 

I could be inconsiderate and tell Roopnaraine many things he should realise about himself including his state of mind but let me avoid that pathway and resuscitate my post-graduate experience that I used to reply to Charles Ceres.

I graduated from UG with the President Medal and a school of other awards. I won a scholarship to MacMaster University to do my Masters. I completed my Masters (which Ceres didn’t know) and won a scholarship from global competition to do my doctorate at the University of Toronto.

I completed my doctoral thesis but left to serve Prime Minister, Maurice Bishop in Grenada and did not pursue my PhD qualification. I have taught for 26 consecutive years at UG with publications to my name. I served as the media consultant to Information Minister, Moses Nagamootoo in 1999.

If someone like Roopnaraine who lives outside was knowledgeable of people and events in Guyana, he would have had known a little bit more of me. His letter on me is mountainous evidence that people who don’t live in Guyana should not become Zoom interviewers interrogating Guyanese who live here when they don’t know what the hell is taking place in Guyana.

I end with some simple advice for Roopnaraine – come back, live here and sell your stuff to Guyanese. I will buy from you.

(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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