Freddie has found his deserved niche

Feb 21, 2023 Letters

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Dear Editor,

One, Mahindra Persaud, asked about the ‘Silence from all on the discontinuance of (the) Freddie Kissoon’s column (in the KN). He explains that “… everyone is entitled to share his or her views on matters of national interests. (and that) Freddie Kissoon was denied his rights and not a voice has spoken or written about this great act of silencing a voice that speaks for many of Guyana’s voiceless.” So, what is my take?

First, if ever Freddie Kissoon ‘was denied his rights,’ it was when he was ‘fired’ by the present government from UG, a matter which I will not comment on right now). As Mr. Glen Lall pointed out, “Publishers reserve the right to part with any contributor at any given time, particularly when the contributor is being paid a salary.” Simply put, Glen Lall’s philosophy for his newspaper was not being adhered to by Freddie Kissoon, and in remaining recalcitrant, Freddie ‘dismissed’ himself.

Readers, please note that this was the exact scenario with Adam Harris. Harris could not deliver the ‘candour’ that characterises Lall, and ‘out’ he went. In Harris’s case, he could not exercise equal and unbiased ‘objectivity’ against the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance for Change (APNU/AFC) for their 2020 elections rigging attempts. He came over as a partisan employee. The same is the situation with Freddie Kissoon. The very evils he wrote about the People’s Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C) during their 1992-2015 tenure, he seems to have forgotten, and for some reason, he is pre-occupied with lambasting APNU/AFC for their rigging attempts. That is now, at every level, a non-issue. It is consummate boredom and even the Commission of Inquiry into the riggings did not generate the expected levels of interest.

Let me say forthrightly, that Glen Lall historically has shown no favour or bias. His various media platforms were and are still open to focus on issues that need confrontation. He has remained steadfast and neutral regarding the rigging attempts, secret oil deals, lack of transparency, poverty and a host of other matters, and he cares little for who are the culpable ones, as he is equally generous and scathing against any and all regimes, namely the PPP/C and the APNU/AFC. He may lack the conventional ways of doing things, but whatever he does, and the principles he follows, remain consistent. He expects this of his employees, and they all know this beforehand.

I am reminded of Room 592. When that programme stormed Guyana and the Diaspora, PPP-ites were exhilarated. The big-wigs of Anil Nandlall and Jagdeo capitalised on this Yog Mahdeo show. So why, now, because the Lall sees ‘governmental follies’ he must remain silent. I think this is the major reason his platform is so far-reaching and his viewership and audience out number, maybe the combined efforts of the Stabroek News, The Guyana Times and the Guyana Chronicle. For me, Glen Lall is the embodiment of ‘fairness’ and ‘real’ democracy.

Secondly Editor, please take note that I am not attempting to ingratiate myself to you, or anyone. I am safely removed from Guyana (geographically and economically). I have a simple job in North America where I have been residing with my family, a working wife and two children (both in schools). I escaped Guyana legally. I now live with no pervasive fear, like that of being ‘choked and robbed,’ attacked on the streets, being a victim of a home invasion, killed in the road chaos or stressed out by poor services from the Neighbourhood Democratic Council and lack of police interventions in issues such as noise nuisance. Imagine people are still fearful of going into Georgetown, especially in certain areas and at certain hours. Imagine, when blackout comes on, which is frequent, my washing is left (un) hung up. Imagine buying bottled water in a land that boasts about ‘portable’ water. The list is interminable.

Now for a word on Freddie Kissoon. The man is either functioning in an intoxicated stupor or suffering from impaired memory, or even an injured mentality. Let me illustrate. In “The rise and role of paranoia in the PPP,” Jul 21, 2008, he ranted that “Mr. Jagdeo is no different from his predecessors who lived many moons before he was born. I continuously refer to the PPP as a culture. All its leaders are prisoners of that culture. Mr. Jagdeo was not born when the paranoia took over. He wasn’t born when the paranoia reached horrible levels in the sixties. But his reaction, like that of all PPP leaders gone before him, is one of paranoia.”

In his “Elected dictatorship and East Indians like me.” Jul 16, 2008 Freddie Kissoon wrote that “Days after the 2006 general elections, I wrote that on the day I saw the breakdown of the election results I was ashamed to be an East Indian. I take back not one single word in that article… Looked at from any angle – moral, philosophical, political, scientific– it was wrong for the great masses of East Indians to have voted back the PPP into office. There was in 2006 no conceivable reason why the East Indian communities should have returned to power a group of politicians that did not achieve anything for the bulk of the East Indian population but more so constituted and constitutes a cabal that is corrupt, undemocratic and hopelessly incompetent. You want more?

I can go on ad infinitum, and if one can stand Freddie’s ennui, Kaieteur News archives can be accessed, so I will add just this infantile piece on Vishnu Bisram, PPP/C’s apologist. In pillorying the man, Freddie Kissoon described him as a quack, saying that “Just in case you don’t know, bismuth is a chemical in the periodic table … one of its values is its changing form … I am using the word here in that context.” He elaborated that “It may come across as funny to you to read me referring to Vishnu Bisram as Bismuth Bisram but I have no jocular intention. I believe Vishnu Bisram’s changing forms have caught up with him (as it has Freddie Kissoon). Bisram had gotten into enormous tangles when confronted with the reality that there is no group named NACTA and that he, Bisram, is not a teacher in the US.

Enough is enough. Freddie Kissoon has found his destiny. He has no belonging in anything political nor academic. In “Lie detector and electricity theft,” May 19, 2008, he concluded that “In the two and a half years that are left in his (Jagdeo’s) tenure, that he has lived under the power of Mr. Burnham. (and) I will stand up in any forum in any part of the world and say that the Burnham Government was less corrupt than what we have today (the PPP/C)…and I say most unashamedly that if there should be a tribunal set up to investigate any of the post-Independent governments in Guyana for dubious financial conduct, it should be the post 1992 regime.”

Yours truly,

Prescott Mann

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• A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance, Freddie Kissoon, Mahindra Persaud, Mr. Glen Lall, Prescott Mann

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