‘The Cheddi Jagan of New York’

Vishnu Bisram, the pollster extraordinaire and Stabroek News’ Richmond Hill correspondent who recycles sugary dispatches on how immigrants are celebrating Diwali/Phagwah/Thanksgiving/Christmas on Liberty Avenue, once described Albert Baldeo as “among the hardest working individuals advocating community empowerment.”

In his August 26 2014 letter to SN Bisram writes, “the conviction of this Guyanese and Caribbean community stalwart on a petty matter pertaining to election finance is most unfortunate.’

Not so petty, Vishnu, given the judge yesterday handed the former Guyana magistrate 18 months on obstruction of justice charges.

KN also bigged him up back in March 2012 in a reprinted piece that puff does not begin to describe, but reads suspiciously like a Bisram job.

“The underdog had made history. At a ceremony at the school as Albert prepared to compete with the country’s best brains at Queens College, the adulation of being admired by a large rural community must have left an indelible imprint in his psyche as to the many future challenges in life he would have to overcome, and that for the most part, he had to be a torch bearer. At his admission to the Bar, another first, the Judge remarked that he had never admitted a more promising lawyer, or one from a humbler family.”

.In the legal field, he carved new horizons by becoming the youngest lawyer at 22 years, and a Magistrate and Senior State Counsel at 25 in Guyana. He was one of Guyana’s finest prosecutors and the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal judges complimented him many times for his presentations.”

Referring to a rally on Borough Hall many said it was “akin to the great march upon Washington decades ago undertaken by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..”

“Some described him as the Al Sharpton of Richmond Hill; others refer to him as the Cheddi Jagan of New York..”

“Baldeo plays cricket, and is considered a leading expert on cricket statistics. He is such an accomplished batsman that he holds the record for scoring the most centuries in competitive softball cricket.”

And the profile concludes “Our heroes are often the least acknowledged by us. Sometimes we take them for granted, as if they owe us. We are the ones who collectively owe Albert Baldeo a mountain of debt for fighting for us, and our children and generations to come are the beneficiaries of his largesse.”