Charrandass Persaud is my friend

Nov 20, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – I will never let people in this country dictate my moral choices. The people in this country have no moral right to dictate ethical choices to other Guyanese. Maybe some other nationalities can lecture Guyanese on the moral high ground but Guyanese themselves cannot.

This is a country where people are so barefaced in their double standards and lack of ethical standards that they are unfit to be part of society where a majority of the population is under 45 years.

You look around and you ask yourself if people in this land do not have even a modicum of shame. Don’t they at least have an obligation to family? Should they not think of their children when they display their crass moral double-standards?

Charrandass Persaud after an altercation with a woman who was vituperative in her confrontation with Charran descended to a level he should not have gone into. He should not have said those things to the lady even if he was not an ambassador. The fact that he was an ambassador made it even worse. There is no way he could have retained his job.

So we come to the seminal question? How should Guyana relate to Charran when he comes back to Guyana? I can only answer that question in relation to me. I cannot dictate how other Guyanese should see Charran.

Charran has been my friend for over 30 years. I admit what he did was wrong and he paid the price for his indiscretion. But I am not going to eschew the company of Charran. Charran is welcomed in my world and in my home.

Once I have a say in who is invited to the Gildarie-Freddie KIssoon Show, then Charran will be a future guest. Charran stood tall and courageously and contributed to the strengthening of democracy. If it wasn’t for people like Charran, Guyana may have returned to the epoch of party paramountcy where a maximum leader decides everything. Those decisions impact on the personal direction of your life.

We must keep writing about Forbes Burnham. This autocrat woke up one morning, decided on how you should live and you no longer had control of your life. You no longer could have done the things you wanted to do in your country. It wasn’t one morning. He woke up every morning and decided your fate.

If you think that Charran should be ostracized then you better get your moral rules right. You better make sure your moral compass is properly calibrated. If it is not then you have no moral right to criticize Charran.

Is abusing a woman with sexual words the lowest point in moral wrongness? Could there be other acts of human behaviour so cruel, dangerous that they can be viewed as more depraved, more threatening to society’s social fabric?

The answer to that within my philosophical range of thinking is yes. But before we offer some examples in that regard what about the ethical standards elsewhere? A presidential candidate in Brazil’s previous election to the one just gone by told a congress woman that she is too ugly to be raped. That man, Jair Bolsanaro was voted in as president.

Roman Polanski lives in Paris where he moves within the circle of the literati and the movie industry. Mr. Polanski admitted in his criminal trial in the US that he sodomized an underage girl. He fled the US before sentencing.

I have met people in this country who told me that they like Donald Trump. Mr. Trump’s sexual vocabulary directed at women and his demeaning attitude to women are far more disgusting that the incident where Charran was offensive.

So we come to the question of moral indiscretions that are more threatening to society’s moral fabric than a man’s abuse of a woman. Let us not forget, Charran’s action was confined to a private exchange.

What he did could not have weakened the moral fabric of Guyana or India. When humans endanger the very existence of society that is more dangerous than Charran’s vulgarity.

I believe there is no alternative to the vote. How can you select the committee to lead a community if there is no choice by the community members? Unless a country’s people in complete, impeccable consensus decide on their leaders then we must vote for the people to administer our country.

There are Guyanese in and out of this country that supported the desecration of the right to vote. They haven’t been ostracized. Dr. Vincent Adams disagreed with an AFC leader when that leader openly said in front of dozens of people that Guyana should be partitioned racially. I end with an unapologetic statement. I will not withdraw my friendship from Charran.

(The views expressed in this articles are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.) 

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