Thank you Adam Harris! Thank you Peeping Tom!
Freddie Kissoon Column
Kaieteur News
November 14, 2006
I have thought long and hard about bringing this daily column to an end. I have decided that I should. It is not easy to do a daily column. It is not like a nightly anchor on television.
You dress up each night, walk into the studio and read the news that others have gathered and others have put on the teleprompter. After that, you go home (or maybe have a nocturnal swing).
With writing a daily column it is different. There is research to be done. There are interviews to conduct. There are investigations to pursue. It is onerous and tiresome to do a daily article in a newspaper. I am finding it close to impossible.
After all, I still love my job at UG. I teach students philosophy and I feel I serve a purpose in doing that. I have a job to do at UG, and I hope my energy devoted to writing everyday never detracts from my devotion to UG. In a forthcoming column, I will offer the reason why I continue to stay at UG.
Someone can say that Peeping Tom is a quotidian producer at the Kaieteur News. There are different Peeping Toms. That is so easy to ascertain. Sometimes the endeavour to meet editors' deadline becomes draining. I can write a book on the adventures of trying to meet editors' time limit. Maybe I will do a separate column on that. I am still doing the daily round, because so much exciting news keeps coming out of Guyana .
Aubrey Norton, an important player in the PNC which in itself is a major institution in Guyana has made some statements that need to be analyzed for PNC members so that they can further assess where the PNC is going.
Jerome Khan, perhaps, the second iconoclast, after Raphael Trotman that the PNC has produced in its entire history, has unleashed a memorable statement of self-criticism while commenting on the PNC performance in the August election that ought to be contextualized.
Not to mention a tempestuous attempt by Eric Philips to position himself for leadership of the African Guyanese community. A move that is fraught with extreme danger. This type of politics needs to be exposed.
These are some of the things that are responsible for the continuation of the daily column. I feel I should go on because readers deserve answers to a runaway train of questions. I play my little part in attempting some forms of explanation.
Any justification for still crusading every day on this page can be found in what Peeping Tom and Adam Harris took up after I brought these issues to light. I feel the daily column should have a little longer life after what I have read from these two columnists.
Let's start with Peeping Tom. He devoted an entire column to the Celina Atlantic Resort car park disaster. And that is what it is.
I am not referring to the disaster that will hit the viability of the business but the encouragement of dictatorship by the silence of a group of people that should be the last nationality on earth to remain reticent on the descent into one-man control of a country. That nationality is Guyanese.
One person has a serious quarrel with the owners of the Celina Atlantic Resort and because of that, this entity that is important to the tourist industry in this country must be killed off. It has taken an anonymous writer to follow up on my exposure. Yet this country has wonderfully brave persons that have fought one-man dictatorship with excruciating consequences. Today, those persons have forgotten about the lessons of history, and are set to commit the same errors of the past.
It is downright sickening that a pen-name writer can expose about the abuse of power directed against Celina Atlantic Resort and we have opposition parties in this country that, as late as August, asked us to vote for them.
How contemptuous is the entire bunch of them that they can watch Guyanese people in their eyes and ask them to support them against the PPP Government. Are these people better leaders than those that rule at the moment?
I brought to the attention of the public one of the worst abuses of state resources in the history of this county – the unlimited access to job opportunities by the children of the entire gamut of important PPP functionaries. I didn't mean ministers of the government only. I meant those connected with both the government and the ruling party. This is a form of corruption that in any country would have been written about.
Donald Ramotar replied and asked the question why aren't the children of PPP entitled to the same avenues as all Guyanese.
This man actually had the temerity to reply to the charge that the offspring of PPP leaders use state resources like when a baby uses candy. In a small country like Guyana nothing can be hidden. You see these children with your eyes driving the fancy cars that they can never afford if they had to be in the waiting line for jobs.
You see them in their seats in public sector offices wearing the most important titles on their shoulders.
The nastiest aspect of this manipulation of state resources is that without meeting the requirements of deep experiences and proper qualification, they become consultants drawing down American dollars from the IDB, World Bank, CDB, DFID and CIDA projects in Guyana .
I replied to Ramotar and I requested him to defend his position by submitting the types of occupations these kids have and what were their qualifications. I am yet to hear from him.
He could not provide the information because then we, the Guyanese people, would have seen who gets the scholarships and to which countries. Do you know the children of PPP leaders as a practice do not pursue studies in Cuba ?
Adam Harris in his column last Sunday mentioned this wild incestuousness that has no parallel in the era of Forbes Burnham's rule. This is certainly one of the acts of government under the PPP that is worse than the PNC.
To date, only Adam and I have commented on this type of corruption. When I see this encroaching silence of the people of this country, I realize that perhaps the time hasn't come yet for me to drop my daily column.