Dear Editor,
My letter today concerns Frederick Kissoon’s roughly five references to me in his March 10 Guyana Chronicle column titled “I will never let Guyanese history be distorted.” The column appears to be a direct response to my March 8th article in Stabroek News “Why Guyana’s History matters now.” I honestly could not understand the context in which my name was repeatedly invoked, apart of course from Kissoon’s usual scattershot attacks (curiously, when Mr. Kissoon criticizes any article of mine, he doesn’t cite its title). He refers to my name frequently in his columns, so this was not entirely new. However, the repeated mentions in this particular instance led me to wonder why.
I suspect my reference to the press and the state newspaper led to his fret and fury. I mention this to put on record for the public the supreme reversal of Kissoon’s earlier views of the Chronicle under the same administration as today (the historians and others curious about our past will be able to see this unexplained about turn for themselves in the archives). I also write out of concern for the state of press freedom in Guyana with the impending departure of Stabroek News.
Within the protective enclave of a state-run (albeit taxpayer funded) newspaper, Kissoon appears confident that he can strike at individuals and retreat to the protective embrace of the Chronicle. The treatment of the letter column illustrates the point. My colleague Wazir Mohamed, for example, sent a letter responding to Kissoon’s claims in the Chronicle about the late Rupert Roopnaraine. It is Kissoon’s right to complain about the Stabroek News. Mohamed’s letter was never published as a response in the Chronicle. One wonders, what does Kissoon think about that in relation to freedom of the press? For the record, I am submitting this response to the Chronicle as well.
Kissoon also cultivates the impression that he and his column serve as a kind of moral gatekeeper for Guyanese society. This is a role he has largely assigned to himself, but it sits uneasily beside a record so clearly marked by contradictions, exaggerations, and untruths. Society certainly benefits from outspoken commentators like Kissoon who are willing to address difficult issues. The difficulty with Kissoon is that his interventions seem less concerned with accuracy than with provocation.
My view is that Kissoon’s recent spate of columns, with repeated attacks directed against a small number of individuals, is strategic. They provide diversions from more pressing issues within Guyanese society, issues that he might be uncomfortable in addressing, lest they eventually place him in a state of intellectual and political crisis. The question he must ultimately confront is how far he can go in critiquing the very regime he now defends.
This conclusion becomes even more intriguing when one considers Kissoon’s own past statements. In a column dated November 28, 2012, he wrote:
“I honestly and sincerely believe that the PNC from 1964 to 1992 was not as wicked, mischievous, undemocratic, unpatriotic, uncaring, violent, corrupt, venal, immoral, ethnically driven, incestuous, depraved, culturally uncouth, bombastic and attitudinally imperialistic as the PPP from 1992 onwards.”
How does Kissoon move from such a position to his present posture so dramatically? What exactly shifted? Political opinions can certainly evolve, but such a radical reversal invites the question of whether there may have always been some prior affinity with the very party he once condemned so vehemently.
In this respect Kissoon has been consistent in one regard: the denunciation of opponents through insinuation, half-truths, and personal attacks. His columns often rely on the repetition of issues, recirculation of attacks on individuals, deflection, and claims of victimhood. A lot of people have had their ‘Kissoon’ moment – that is a crescendo of criticism directed at one over several columns and recycled as if constant repetition will in any way increase or lessen a judgment or criticism. I guess this is the dilemma of a daily column.
His recent series of articles attacking the now deceased Rupert Roopnaraine (is it now roughly eleven? One loses count), appears to be part of this pattern.
To repeat, these diversions that keep circling back to the regular suspects may also serve another purpose. They allow Kissoon to avoid confronting emerging tensions between the newest ideological direction of the state and the positions he once held. To his credit, Kissoon once held positions forged during long struggles over Guyana’s political and social direction. Yet the present government is now departing from longstanding patterns in Guyana’s relations with CARICOM, in its foreign policy posture, and in other areas of national domestic life.
In his initial column for the Guyana Chronicle, Kissoon made the claim that his writing would henceforth employ “class analysis.” That declaration is worth examining in light of his subsequent conduct. His class analysis appears to be more focused on ascribing what he describes “Mulatto/Creole” identity on myself and others but doesn’t appear to extend class analysis to more holistic patterns in Guyana.
Where will Kissoon stand when class contradictions, already glaring, become even more manifest? Will he examine the claim made by Gerald Pereira of the Organization for the Victory of the People that “sixteen families” effectively own everything in Guyana? Despite Kissoon’s declared commitment to “class analysis,” it is doubtful that he will focus on the massive gap between haves and have nots opening up, and the new elites emerging within Guyanese society through oil wealth and large-scale land acquisition. Kissoon once characterized Guyana, quite plausibly, as a “cruel, uncaring, indifferent society” or one that is consistently “failing poor people” Is it still so in his mind?
In this context, the Guyana Chronicle functions as a shield for his outpourings. And speaking of shields, one might ask what Kissoon’s perspective is on developments such as the “Shield of the Americas,” or on other important foreign policy and other changes occurring within Guyanese society. If political parties and individuals such as myself pose no threat to the status quo in Guyana which he obviously supports, then why the persistent attention? Why the distraction?
These are the issues that deserve serious attention. Personal disparagement and diversions (as night follows day you can expect Kissoon to produce about eight apoplectic columns on this letter) cannot substitute for the difficult conversations that Guyanese society must confront. This is the tragedy (and the farce) of the Kissoon column as less press freedom looms in Guyana.