Dear WR,

We write to you as a last resort. All our press releases and letters to the other media organisations have not seen the light of day. Needless to say we are utterly disgusted at the manner in which they have bowed to the mighty advertising dollar and suppressed an issue which is of gravest concern to all my colleagues nationwide.

For two years now our lives have been subject to wanton waste. We live in fear of the now annual ‘Duck curry competition’ which has claimed the lives of hundreds of us ducks all across Guyana. We have lost most of our regional and national leaders. Our executive council has virtually been wiped out. We are severely traumatised by all our losses but particularly by the loss of the esteemed President of the Guyana Duck Association and his lovely wife. The couple was taken from their pen at knife-point in a dawn raid and before they could say a quack were dispatched to the pot.

Their twenty-three ducklings are now without parents and Minister Shadick has shown no interest in their welfare. I write to you as the hastily elected president, replacing our fallen leader. His life has been lost, but we hope that it will not be in vain. We ducks are being discriminated against. Why is there no ‘Fowl curry competition’ or ‘Beef curry competition?’

Why must there only be a ‘Duck curry competition’? By our accounts we have contributed an equal share to the pots of the nation. Therefore, to recklessly cause the demise of our most cherished brothers and sisters is no less than barbaric.

Not only have we lost many lives to the competition itself but as a result of the heightened publicity there is now greater interest in us as a meal. The effects on our population have been devastating. As a result of the mass murders, many of my colleagues have resorted to suicide rather than suffering the indignity of being slaughtered and curried at the whim and fancy of a few sadistic maniacs in silly chef hats.

Our pleas have fallen on the deaf ears of the Guyana Animal Rights Association and its know-it-all president Dr Steve Surujbally. As a consequence of the non-action in defending our rights we have withdrawn our membership from the Association. We demand the immediate resignation of Dr Surujbally and his entire executive.

Feathers fly........

We vow to protest continuously until we get justice for all our comrades who have pointlessly lost their lives over the past two years. Unfortunately we are unable to protest in the streets of Georgetown as the members of the Guyana Police Force have joined in the slaughter. On the two occasions that we attempted to protest we lost 74 comrades in pogroms conducted by ranks actually assigned to protect us. We are to testify next week before the Disciplined Forces Commission.

We have also lost the lives of nine of our comrades to the host of the Justice For All Programme. When we were there last Friday to air our views, Mr Sharma caught nine of us for his son’s wedding.

We beseech you, Mr Editor, not to curry favour with your advertisers and discard this letter. We need our situation to be highlighted, we need justice! We need, we demand an end to the Annual Duck Curry Competition!

Yours sincerely,

Bill T. Quack

President

Guyana Duck Association

Editor’s note:

We sent this letter to Dr Steve Surujbally for his comments:

“Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to respond to Mr Quack’s allegations. I would like to add that Mr Quack along with about fifty of his colleagues invaded my yard a few weeks ago trapping me in my house for over two hours. He even called in a strike by a squadron of Canadian geese. It was like hailstones hitting our roof. Since then my parrot has stopped talking to me.

Mr Quack’s approach to what is a complex subject is not helping his cause. Is he suggesting that ducks have a right not to be eaten more than any other creature? His supposition is both presumptuous, preposterous, pusillanimous and something else beginning with ‘p’ that I just can’t think of right now. Are we to believe that fish are up in arms about being fried? Before we know it potatoes will be complaining about the trauma of being rooted out of the ground. The only advice I have for Mr Quack is go to the pot with dignity.”

Editor: We consider this correspondence closed.

The First Annual Conference on the life and works of Freddie Kissoon

September 12, 2003 held at Le Meridien Hotel

9:00 am National Anthem (those who don’t know the second verse will be shot)

9:15 am Musical tribute to Freddie by the children of his alma mater, Picked Upon Primary.

9:30 First paper: ‘Love child of Sigmund Freud Or Karl Marx?’

10:00 am Group discussion: Don Quixote or Wiley Coyote?

Coffee break: tea, coffee, fruit juices served with salara especially thrown on the ground of the City Hall compound and then rushed to the conference hall.

10:30 am ‘The seatbelt buckle as socio-economic metaphor’

11:00 am ‘A medical approach to societal paranoia’ by Dr Walter Ramsahoye including slide-show of cat scans of Freddie’s brain

11:45 am Is Freddie paying too much tax? by Christopher Ram

12:30 pm Lunch

Baked Chicken (gutted and plucked by Essequibo housewives thus avoiding any contribution to the mega-chicken processing corporations)

Fried rice (harvested by hand, picked and polished by out-of-season cane-cutters thereby providing valuable income for the country’s working poor)

Pakchoi (taken from Freddie’s own organic vegetable plot planted on the seawall and fertilised by natural urea)

1:30 pm Kissoon in a multi-ethnic nation: Colour blind or just plain blind?

2:30 pm Guided tour of Freddie’s favourite spots including the seawall, his UG haunts and his childhood home. A visit to the famous grass clippings site, now a national monument, honoured by Greenpeace and an inspection of a senior lawyer’s new model Mercedes.

4:00 pm Final paper: Praise, then thoroughly slash and burn - the Kissoon Critical Method

Question of the Week

The President’s wife is asking for donations to save a child? The country must be really broke.