Freddie should conduct a poll on himself
Dear Editor,
People have a right to a response to any attack in the media – a principle adopted by every democratic media. Discredited columnist Freddie Kissoon has had a history of viciously attacking people unprovoked and without any evidence and a response not being published. In his latest trademark assault (KN Aug 11), Freddie stated Vishnu Bisram is not a respected pollster because I refused to pay him a consultancy fee. Yes I should have hired him as a consultant and paid him a fee to stop the attacks.
I have consistently exposed Freddie’s writings for their shallowness, inaccuracies and lack of scholarship and academic rigor. And his latest salvo against me is replete with those characteristics.
Contrary to what Freddie pens about my polls, everywhere I visited in Guyana people shower adulations, admiration and respect for my surveys and writings. They found my surveys to be most credible and have found Freddie to be a discredited and despicable individual. In fact, publishers and editors of all the publications in Guyana have exposed Freddie for his tainted views, lack of credibility and his dishonesty. As intellects and politicians in Guyana note, he suffers from character deficits. They note that almost all of Freddie’s arguments and claims have lacked evidence; that much is clear from his writings that are unsupported. Freddie has been rebuked by so many that it leaves one to ask has Freddie ever written anything that is accurate? He can’t even get the role of the CIOG correct as respected writer Abu Bakr and the head of CIOG pointed out. Whenever he was challenged to present evidence of his claims, he backed down. No less a person than Albert Ramdin, Ralph Ramkarran, Annan Boodram, and Mark Benchchop, among others, have condemned Freddie for his dishonesty. As I found in my survey on Freddie, he lacks respect among most Guyanese – he should conduct a survey on himself to find out how unpopular he is and he would understand, as he complained, why so many have slapped him or poured miasmic materials on his head.
As others have noted, Freddie craves attention and comments on everything asunder including on whether the sun rises from the east. He thrives on controversies, misstatements, inaccuracies and erroneous information. Freddie’s interpretation of social theories is consistently incorrect as classmates in Toronto informed me; Freddie was frequently rebuked by Professors for his lack of understanding of basic theories.
On polling, Guyanese made countless challenges to Freddie to conduct his own polls to contrast his findings and NACTA’s against actual election results. Freddie contends that I don’t conduct polls. That being the case, can he explain why polls conducted by other organizations and individuals reveal findings different from mine and how come my findings are relatively accurate (measured against election results) and others are completely wrong. In 1992, Freddie said his analysis showed the PNC getting 10% of the votes and PPP 25% and the WPA winning the election. The actual result showed PPP 53% and PNC 43% and WPA less than 2%. In 2011, Freddie condemned the NACTA poll showing PPP getting 48% of the votes and praised a Cadres poll showing PPP getting 34% of the votes. Actual voting results gave PPP 49%. By Freddie’s logic, Cadres was right and Nacta was wrong even though NACTA was spot on.
Freddie’s real issue with the NACTA/Bisram/TRPI polls is on consultancy fee. In 1991, as Dev, Ramharack, Ramracha, and others would attest, Freddie approached us as to be as paid as a consultant for our polls. We rejected him outright because he is no pollster and he did not shine in his studies or demonstrated competence in field research. In fact, he is not even qualified as an academic and had to be terminated by UG administration.
Freddie is challenged to analyze all of NACTA’s polls against actual results and do the same for polls conducted by other entities; he will find that NACTA’s polls are most accurate. The Cadres and Morris polls showed PPP getting about 34% and the “Clive Thomas” poll showed the PPP and APNU getting about the same support when in fact PPP got about 8% more than APNU. Clearly, the NACTA poll comes closest to actual election results.
Vishnu Bisram
