Dear Editor.
Today I was sent an article written by Fredrick Kissoon, titled “Forbes Burnham’s Birthday Next to Mashramani,” published in the Guyana Chronicle on February 23, 2026. I am sure Kissoon presented this missive with the intention of it being considered an analysis; however, what we got was, at best, ramblings.
This article, with its heavy reliance on speculation rather than evidence, is devoid of logical coherence. Instead of advancing ideas, Kissoon leans on insults such as “comical,” “moronic,” and “doesn’t read” in a transparent attempt to manufacture the appearance of analysis. In place of reasoned conclusions, he offers crude exaggerations like “paragraphs smell worse than dead meat,” reducing what purports to be commentary to little more than verbal theatrics. The reckless way in which he lurches from one unsubstantiated allegation to another is so pronounced that it could qualify as an Olympic event in intellectual indiscipline.
In itself, the article is not deserving of a response; were it not for the spectacle of Fredrick Kissoon prostrating himself at the altar of political mercenarism, it would have been best left ignored. This piece stands as an embodiment of Fredrick Kissoon’s total moral capitulation.
It will be recalled that Fredrick Kissoon, as a columnist at Stabroek News and later at Kaieteur News, held himself out as a fearless, independent intellectual voice. The intellectual aspect of Kissoon’s carefully orchestrated persona was always a matter of debate, but many conceded his claim to independence.
The fact that he was persecuted by the PPPC is public knowledge. The incident in which a PPPC operative threw feces in his face was a high point of that persecution. However, between then and now, he has quietly bent the knee to the PPP. His writing, while still rambling, now reeks of an underling groveling for attention.
Fredrick Kissoon’s prostration is most evident in his illogical contention that Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham, the Father of the Nation, caused “the Venezuelans to invoke its claim on Guyana.” This contention is egregious and wholly at odds with the historical record, and stands as clear evidence of Kissoon’s servility to the PPP. This claim alone is sufficient to dismiss his entire article as the trifling of a deranged mind.
But even this pales in comparison to his assertion that the “…rule of Forbes Burnham from 1968 to his death in 1985 was the third most terrible period in Guyanese history after slavery, then colonialism.” Nothing in post-indenture Guyana compares to the horrors of the early 2000s, during the era of the Phantom Squad and state-sponsored death squads. Fear stalked the land. Human life was cheap. There were butcher shops where bodies were dismembered for disposal, and even funeral homes where corpses were illegally stored and stacked—grim scenes reminiscent of the mass body storage witnessed in New York at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
When the curtains came down, more than four hundred young Guyanese were dead.
It is true that we have had individual events that were deeply traumatizing, such as the killing of the Enmore Martyrs, the Sun Chapman bombing, the Linden Bridge executions, the killings of Ronald Waddell and Courtney Crum-Ewing, and the murder of Father Dark; but nothing compares to the period when PPP-sponsored death squads and the PPP-aligned Phantom Squad stalked the land.
As stated previously, Fredrick Kissoon’s article is so devoid of credible content that it does not warrant a response on its own merit; however, it provides a useful opportunity to draw attention to Fredrick Kissoon’s prostration.