Mr. Bissesar sought refuge in Cheddi Jagan’s legacy

May 04, 2024 Letters

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Dear Editor,

In its May 2nd, 2024 edition, Kaieteur News published a letter written by Rajendra Bisessar under the headline; ‘The “lean and clean” government of Dr. Cheddi Jagan is a thing of the past.’

In his letter, Mr. Bisessar bad-talked the PPP from beginning to end. Unsurprisingly, his principal target was PPP General Secretary and Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo.

But it was the PPP as a whole, it’s congresses and the election of Party leaders.

Mr. Bisessar sought to besmirch and to bring into disrepute believing narcissistically that his letter would influence delegates and observers attending the historic event at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre. It just wouldn’t happen.

Mr. Bissesar has established himself as a known critic of the PPP in general and Jagdeo in particular. Setting himself up as a know-all about the PPP, his criticisms of the Party, its internal procedures, electoral practices and policies usually lack substance. Moreover when fact-checked, the content will be found to be based on self-inflicted bitterness. And the thrust of his arguments suffer from muscular atrophy.

Like so many of his ilk who left the PPP, Mr. R. Bisessar, unashamedly, sought refuge in the legacy of Cheddi Jagan declaring rather cynically that Jagan was a good man while all those who now sit at the leadership level of the PPP have betrayed his legacy. This is old hat. It never gained traction because all Party leaders are democratically nominated and elected by a process laid down in the Constitution and by a time-tested electoral process.

In case Mr. Bisessar has forgotten, let me remind him that Article 5 of the PPP’s Constitution ‘Rights and Duties of Members’ provides that every member has the Right within the Party, to openly express his or her view on any question under discussion; every member shall practice criticism and self-criticism; every member has the Right to address a question or statement to a leading committee to which there must be prompt response; every member in good standing has the right to be nominated and elected to all offices and committees; every member has a right to be heard whenever decisions are taken regarding his or her activities or conduct; every member, group or committee disagreeing with a decision of any leading Committee has the right to appeal the decision to the next higher body and request that the question be reopened. Mr Bisessar must have forgotten about Article 15 of the Constitution treating with ‘Party Discipline.’

For the period while he was a Party member Mr. Bissesar gained the reputation of being a ‘‘griper’ and ‘born complainer.’ Interestingly, the records would show that he never formally utilized any of the above mechanisms to address any of the ‘grievances’ he raised in his letter, his preference was to go about complaining, voicing his grievances and pointing to anything and everything he deemed negative.

The fantasies contained in his letter about cadre development and promotion and about the Party’s internal electoral process, are so bizarre, they suggest that it’s author is capable of seeing ‘more devils than vast hell can hold’.

What Mr. Bissesar alluded to in respect to election to leading Party bodies is mind boggling to say the least. It is difficult to fathom what was in his mind when he wrote about that in his letter since it seemed such a patchy, sketchy and wonky version just good enough to be consigned as fake news full of gaps, falsehoods, assumptions and his own fuzzy recollection of a process that is indisputably democratic.

What was surprising is not so much the imperfections of the picture painted by Mr. Bisessar about PPP congresses and the internal electoral process within the Party, but how little his lamentations matter to Guyanese in the context of the bigger picture depicting the rapidly unfolding developmental trajectory in the country under the Ali administration.

Mr. Bisessar joined the ranks of PPP haters a long time ago after sulking on the periphery of Party politics from the day he joined to the day he left. He eventually found his calling as a junior fabulator formulating narratives that made no sense in the evolving world of Guyanese politics. In his letter, Mr. Bisessar made a crude attempt to distort and mislead readers about the workings of the PPP hoping that by default his unfocused and mushy narrative will gain traction.

Bisessar’s letter is an irrational blend of fiction and fantasy. He constructs a narrative characterized by imperfection and disjointed personal experiences supplied by a host of negativity so characteristic of the man for those who know him.

Moreover, his flight of fantasy concerning internal democracy in the PPP is based on his own mind-records and false recollections many of which are poorly detailed and so unconvincing, that no one in their right senses will ever believe that what he claimed occurred ever happened at PPP congresses.

Appearing to be so caught up in conjecture and falsehoods, Mr. Bisessar probably didn’t even realize that in his letter he referred to occurrences that never happened since he relied exclusively on his limited store of knowledge about the workings of the PPP, memory lapses and distorted beliefs.

Mr. Bisessar’s letter exposed his predilection for inventing stories whether it was about himself and others or about the PPP’s internal electoral procedures, in the circumstances, he comes across as someone apparently afflicted by a spell of his own making.

Mr. Bisessar claimed that what he wrote in his letter was learnt from actual lived experiences for the period he was associated with the PPP, however without even knowing it, his letter turned out to be a heap of nonsense because he relied heavily on the axe he has to grind with the PPP.

Sadly, Mr Bisessar is unable to free himself from the loads of misinformation, half truths and falsehoods to which he has shackled himself.

As Theseus said: ‘Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, such shaping fantasies that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends.’

Yours faithfully,

Clement J. Rohee

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• Cheddi Jagan, congresses, influence, observers, Rajendra Bisessar

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