EXPLANATIONS
Freddie Kissoon column
Kaieteur News
January 24, 2007
From Sunday through Tuesday (yesterday), I have been contacted by people, some of whom are well placed in the society, some with whom I enjoy having conversations. All of them discussed my columns for last Saturday and Sunday.
My Saturday article disagreed with Ministerial Advisor Odinga Lumumba citing the contents of the divorce papers of the then wife of Mr. Christopher Ram. My Sunday article was on the nature of the Stabroek News and the role of its co-founder, Mr. Miles Fitzpatrick, at that time when the Stabroek was the only independent paper as such then, the only newspaper in Guyana, after the little Catholic Standard had reverted to its pristine self following the 1992 elections, that is, being a religious newspaper serving the Catholic community.
Two Ministers of the Government, (one I met, the other called me) disagreed with my denouncing of Mr. Lumumba's citation. I cannot name the ministers, just to say that one of them I share a friendly relationship with, the other I happen to know on a non-antagonistic basis. There was only one point in their presentations. I will summarise it. They are of the opinion that people who criticise the government cannot do so from within a glass house.
If the government is constantly berated for fallen standards, then government critics have to meet the same high standards they lament as absent in the leaders of the government. I was told that Mr. Ram accused President Jagdeo of spending money for flood victims when he was not legally authorised to do so. In other words, Mr. Ram has indicted the President of illegal conduct. I was told that a commentator should not go that far. Why then can't Lumumba go that far?
This is easy pickings. A schoolboy can reply to that. You cannot meet a vice with a vice. Two wrongs cannot make a right. If Mr. Ram hit below the belt, then why drag yourself down in the gutter by doing the same? But I am not convinced that the two cases are in the same category.
What Mr. Lumumba did cannot be equated with Mr. Ram's charge that the President acted illegally when he did not seek parliamentary approval for monies he distributed.
I will end it there, though I confess the arguments on both sides are strong.
In my Saturday article, I did call on Mr. Ram for an explanation because, indeed, Mr. Lumumba made an enormously serious charge against him. It is obligatory of Mr. Ram to offer his readers and his listeners an explanation.
Two highly respected persons in this country, who have earned the admiration of a majority of Guyanese, told me they were emotionally moved by my description of what Mr. Miles Fitzpatrick did to me at the Stabroek News, and they asked me for further explanation. Since both of them know Mr. Fitzpatrick, I suggested that they ask him.
For some esoteric reason (they spoke to me separately), they said they prefer not to. The fascination for both of them is why would Mr. Fitzpatrick accept a case to defend Mr. Hamilton Green and not me?
For both of these men, this was the worrying part. How can I be a worse political actor than Mr. Green, when I hardly have done any personal harm to others, much less as a leading powerhouse in my country?
The Fitzpatrick article last Sunday brought several inquiries from other people, some of whom hardly know me, yet the column intrigued them. I believe that, apart from those two prominent citizens, the other questioners cannot believe some of the things we Guyanese are capable of, because we are so well-known in society.
I have written several times in this column that I believe we, historians, scholars, and analysts, owe it to posterity to put down our thoughts in writing and to let the next generation know the truths of their country's history.
I have never shied away from doing so because that was the intellectual tradition I was educated into. I didn't wait for Martin Carter to die to assert my belief that he had class and colour prejudices. Carter was alive when I penned that opinion. It didn't go down well with several persons I know.
I have composed several articles on Janet Jagan, on the flaws in her political character, and how unacceptable I find her political modus operandi. My article on Fitzpatrick and David De Caires, last Sunday, was in the same vein. I will continue to write on the knowledge I have gained in living in this world. I will highlight the good and the bad in people, trying to do so with careful and meticulous sensitivity.
I will end with the question about Miles Fitzpatrick that was demanded of me by one of those persons I hold dear. It is why I think I am completely persona non grata in Mr. Fitzpatrick's book. I have written several times on my experience as a columnist at Stabroek News and my encounters with Mr. Fitzpatrick and Mr. De Caires. In all those articles, I have pointed to class and colour.
I don't think anyone from the lower classes ever argued back with Fitzpatrick. When I did, I think it shocked his psyche. Something psychically snapped inside of Mr. Fitzpatrick. The colonial elite by a process of Gramscian hegemony is recognised as the cream of the cream in the society. People accept them as belonging to a higher, superior order. I was just a nobody who was being patronised by the Stabroek News. I should have known my place, and not been insubordinate. It was like in the movie “Schindler's List”, when the concentration camp commander beat his servant mercilessly because she tried to prove she was as human as he was.
My article last Sunday was more in defence of the Kaieteur News, rather than a lamentation of the weaknesses of the Stabroek News. I thought it was presumptuous of the Stabroek News to say that, because it had a business page, it was a better paper than the Kaieteur News. The Kaieteur News has come a long way. Respect is due.