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Dear Editor,
Even though many have advised that I should leave unanswered, what I dubbed in 1992, “Mr. Fredrick Kissoon’s querulous polemics”, I do believe that he performs a yeoman task in this country – that of a public intellectual gadfly.
This is not an inconsiderable contribution in the creation or maintenance of a democratic society. But I do wish he would be a tad more careful with some of his utterances that he issues so definitively as “facts” – and when these are shown to be erroneous, blithely goes on to make other, just as outrageous, allegations.
In his Monday (14-04-08) column, referring to my use of the words, “our country (meaning his and mine)”, he asserted: “I need to point out to Dev that Guyana is my land. I hold no passport for another country, unlike Mr. Dev.” To drag this allegation into a discussion about the regimes of the PPP and Mr. Burnham’s PNC could serve no other purpose than to burnish Mr. Kissoon’s patriotism vis a vis mine, and confer on him a greater legitimacy to this land. I responded unambiguously: “I have never had a passport other than a Guyanese one in my entire life, unlike what Mr. Kissoon claims so categorically. It has been said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, but I do believe that Mr. Kissoon has earned the right to say, “Guyana is my land”. Without even an acknowledgement of his misstatement, much less an apology, Mr. Kissoon veered off to declare that as far as “patriotism as a refuge of scoundrels” was concerned, in “Freudian terms” I was thinking about my “friends in the US” and some named expatriate Guyanese, with whom he disagrees. Evidently, overseas Guyanese cannot be as patriotic as Mr. Kissoon, because they enjoy “luxuries” abroad.
I raise this issue at this time because this tactic is an old one with Mr. Kissoon – he made the same allegations about myself back in the early nineties. He further claimed that I “chose to attack someone like me (Mr. Kissoon) who fought for the re-creation of the circumstances that would allow Dev and the PPP to be free once more…” Isn’t this ploy reminiscent of the “Where was Ravi Dev?” from the very PPP, whom Mr. Kissoon excoriates for using “dictatorial” tactics? What I would like to remind Mr. Kissoon, once again, is that overseas Guyanese played a vital role in the struggle for free and fair elections here.
The group of which I was part (and of which Mr. Vishnu Bisram also was) and so many others, lobbied Senators (especially Kennedy), Congressmen, the National Endowment for Democracy, and numerous US institutions including the Carter Center, to consider Guyana’s plight.
We picketed PNC officials when they appeared and hosted (as well as gave financial support) to all opposition parties. An essential point I would like to make about the overseas Guyanese involvement is that it would have been easier for them to enjoy their “luxuries” then (as today) but it was their love of this land that made them get involved.
Today, if the MFI’s can comment on our affairs because they have forgiven some debts, then Guyanese who send back over US$400 million annually have certainly earned the right.
But Mr. Kissoon does not deny all Guyanese the right to comment on Guyanese affairs – he has quoted approvingly from some of his old colleagues in the WPA who are also presumably enjoying those crass “overseas” luxuries, with nary a censure from him - but only those whose views differ from his politically.
Is this the mindset by which he hopes to build democracy in Guyana? Remember the old adage: ends are merely consummated means and thus the two can never be disjunctured. And isn’t this one of the practices of the PPP that Mr. Kissoon also castigates?
Finally, unmindful and unrepentant of his recent categorical misstatements (that the African Security Dilemmas was added to the Indian one “to save my sinking ship”; that I was a citizen of another country, etc) Mr. Kissoon offers another whopper: I have a “niche at Freedom House or New Garden Street”. All because, to his assertion that, “I believe the rule of the PPP has degenerated in forms that are worse than under Forbes Burnham.” I wrote: “Analyses of social phenomena, by their very nature, suggest strategies of action for the citizenry. In a country where some have launched violent attacks on citizens and state, care should be taken when an analysis may justify such strategies for regime change.” The words, “care should be taken” are interpreted as an “attack” by Mr. Kissoon. If I knew even an iota as much about Freud as Mr. Kissoon asserts he does, I may be tempted to suggest (not assert) that Mr. Kissoon is a bit paranoid. He should have waited for my analysis of the PPP’s regime in next Sunday’s Kaieteur News.
Ravi Dev