Skip to main content

FM
Former Member

Is President Ramotar changing his opinion of me?

JANUARY 27, 2013 | BY  | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTSFREDDIE KISSOON 
 

A strange thing happened in the Chronicle last week that may be interpreted as President Ramotar changing his negative opinion of me.
We will come to that thing which I didn’t know about until a police prosecutor, Enrico Woolford and Mark Benschop, told me about it.


But first, the 2011 analysis of President Ramotar of my character
On December 15, 2011, Reuters carried a report by Brian Ellsworth, edited by Kieran Murray on Guyana in which the Jagdeo libel case against me was featured.
President Ramotar was interviewed by Ellsworth and in the story, the following line appeared, “President Ramotar describes Kissoon as a sick man.”
Of course I wasn’t bothered by Ramotar’s remark. I expect the worst things to be said of me because of my political activities and critical analyses.


Did you look at MSNBC during Obama’s second inauguration?  Commentator, Chris Matthews, enumerated all the sordid things said in the press and from the mouths of Republicans about Obama, including the description of being America’s first gay president. Of course the entire world knows Obama is not gay.


When I read the Reuters report I thought that Ramotar’s remark on me makes him the third president to come from the medical profession. Dr. Jagan was a dentist, Mrs. Jagan was a nurse and now it looks like Ramotar did studies in psychiatry.
I am still unmoved about Ramotar’s analysis of my mind but what I can’t help thinking is if Ramotar sees as sick, some of the people in high positions in government. Am I sick? I do not molest male teenagers for sex. Am I sick? I never exported dolphins to Eastern Europe where I am told they were cooked and sold as delicacy. Am I sick? I never accompanied the President to an international boxing match and in front of him and foreign diplomats got into a violent brawl with a member of the audience.


Am I sick? I never put my wife out of the marital bedroom a week after we got married and after that let Guyana believe for the next eight years that I was legally married. Am I sick? I never beat a teenager with a gun in his head in a rum shop over a woman. Am I sick? I was never in a domestic quarrel and my wife committed suicide in the confusion. Am I sick? I never sold American visas and because of that the US Embassy suspended my visas.


Am I sick? I never participated in a homosexual orgy in a swimming pool. Am I sick? I never took money from the OMAI gold company and the same company imported marble walls from Italy for my mansion.


As the recipient of Mr. Ramotar’s psychiatric evaluation, I think I am entitled to ask him about the state of the mental health of people around him. But we should move on from harbouring grudges over what was said in the past during political battles.


If the Chronicle thing is an indication that Mr. Ramotar does not see me in venomous terms anymore, then I would not refuse his invitation to talk. But I will not keep secret what I discussed with him. I will never do that. I will tell the Guyanese people what I said on their behalf. Vic Puran wrote in the KN a month before he died that we should try to engage Mr. Ramotar because he, Ramotar, wants to have advice and friends.


Let us return to the Chronicle thing. I met lots of policemen during my frequent court appearances. Two police prosecutors are always joking wildly with me and Mark Benschop. So last week with an Atlantic smile on his face, one of them congratulated me for becoming a columnist with the Chronicle. He indicated that he saw an article of mine with my byline on the crime spree in Buxton in the current issue of the Chronicle. I knew he was joking so I didn’t bother to engage him.
Hours after I went to the office of Enrico Woolford, he and Mark Benschop told me about the Chronicle column.


So it was true, but the Chronicle didn’t have the decency to seek my permission.
The Chronicle editor would never feature Freddie Kissoon without seeking the advice of the Freedom House kings, particularly President Ramotar. I am so sorry we are not in an election campaign so I could go to Indian villages and show them my independent mind and what I wrote about the Buxton-based gunmen and my strong condemnation of the murder of East Indian citizens at that time.


How un-strategic of the Freedom House fools. Together with persons like Ravi Dev, they tell their constituencies that I don’t like East Indian people. But the article that they reproduced in the Chronicle last week shows the nature of my mind, heart and soul. I am not pro- or anti-Indian. I believe in human rights and my condemnation of the violence in Buxton originated from my human rights physiology.


Whenever there are the local government elections, I will take that article the PPP found to have so much intellectual integrity that they could print it in the Chronicle in 2013, and read it to the rural folks.


During the time I did the series of articles on Buxton, my home was shot up, and a bullet missed by wife’s head by inches. All those details have been written on before, so no need to dwell on them here.


I am glad the Freedom House kings gave the Chronicle permission to print my intellectual analyses. I have a weapon to campaign with whenever elections come around. In the meantime, De Donald or Uncle Donald or President Ramotar may want to issue a second opinion on my mental health.

Rohee lacks credibility to institute police reform

 
JANUARY 10, 2013 | BY  | FILED UNDER LETTERS 

 

 

DEAR EDITOR,


I refer to Mr Harry Gill’s letter in the Kaieteur News Jan 5, 2013, in which he blames the opposition for holding the security of the nation at ransom. It is the PPP which has failed to deliver security to the nation for twenty years. The actions of the PPP over the past twenty years make me extremely doubtful that Minister Rohee is serious about reforming the police.


Let us go through a few historical facts to see whether the PPP has ever sent the signals that it desires a professional police force. This Minister allowed a Commissioner who “benefited materially from the drugs trade” to continue in that capacity without even an investigation.


He failed to deliver a forensic lab and instead produced an agency suspected of spying on opposition activists – the Central Intelligence Unit. They have now placed the names of several activists, including yours truly, on a surveillance list.
Gradual steps are being made towards an authoritarian government run by elected oligarchs and buttressed by a few in the private sector connected to the oligarchy through special privileges.


No entity has failed this country in security as much as the PPP. No government has weakened and compromised the security apparatus as much as the PPP. Hundreds of murders have gone uninvestigated and unpunished – some are obvious cover-ups. Documents are disappearing thus making trials impossible. Some of these murders started early in the administration – for example the Good Friday 1993 murder of a young lady Monica Reece. Gill should talk to Guyanese in Georgetown. Some of them will give leads.


As if allowing a compromised Commissioner is not enough, the PPP allowed a now convicted cocaine trafficker to fight crimes on behalf of the State. This is perhaps the greatest example of undermining the capacity of the State since independence.
It would take the Americans to convict this drugs dealer since he was given complete protection by this country’s government.


If any Guyanese wants to have insights into the political aspects of the Buxton freedom fighters they will need to read Mr Freddie Kissoon’s columns in the Guyana Chronicle. Imagine the great powers in the PPP allowed their greatest nemesis, Kissoon, to write in the Chronicle, only on these events, because of their willingness capitalise politically on the events and the suffering of innocents.
Kissoon also is the only Guyanese – I stand corrected – who has published peer-reviewed and scholarly work on this period (see Kissoon, F., 2007, “African extremism in the age of political decay: the case of Guyana.” In Governance, Conflict Analysis and Conflict Resolution, Grant, C.H. and R. Mark Kirton (eds.), Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers).


The lesson here is the PPP is only willing to address crimes in a selected manner and exploit heinous crimes for political gains.


They have continued to fail the nation and even their own members and supporters. We don’t know who killed Minister Sawh and family, for instance. Who were behind the Lusignan, Bartica, Agricola and Lindo Creek massacres?
Why did the PPP refuse an official Inquiry into the riots of Jan 12, 1998? This inquiry was left to a private organization to do.
This is never optimal. Without official sanctions the country will not be able to fashion solutions.


The PPP decided early on that it would not do police reforms, in spite of many warnings on Oct 5, 1992, that reforming the police ought to be its top priority. It did nothing and even maintained the old Commissioner and structure.
Yet Harry Gill has the gall to question the valid points raised by Mr Granger and Mr Ramjattan.


Gill has conveniently brushed under the carpet the PPP’s sordid crime-fighting record. As a matter of fact, the PPP does not have a crime-fighting record. It has a crime-perpetuating record. But there is a more insidious side to this strategy.
The PPP can stir up ethnic fears in East Indian villages by blaming the opposition for crimes while not doing anything – they can suck cane and blow whistle! Fortunately, East Indians are beginning to see the strategy of destruction that has accounted for a decline in their population from 51% in 1992 to 43% today.


Since Mr Rohee lacks minimum credibility as Minister of Home Affairs, it is important for President Ramotar – if he is genuinely concerned about police reform – to call on the Parliamentary parties to serve as part of this reform process.  The reform of the police can serve as a confidence-building mechanism and start a new era of cooperation between the government and opposition.


As this letter highlights, I am deeply suspicious of the PPP and doubt it genuinely wants to reform the police.  Therefore, I hope the Ramotar government will prove me wrong by bringing everyone into this reform process.


Tarron Khemraj

FM

Add Reply

×
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×
×