I have suffered too much to let APNU-AFC destroy Guyana

OCTOBER 18, 2015 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Dear Editor, I begin my response to Dr. Lomarsh Roopnarine’s letter in yesterday’s Kaieteur News in which he called upon me to apologize for my reference to some Indian Guyanese as Indian supremacists. I am afraid I cannot do that. If there was an accusation of mine against Dr. Roopnarine that he is an Indian supremacist then I would suggest he deny it and offer his analysis why the label is wrong. It would appear that Roopnarine wants an apology from me for so describing him. He has to convince me he is not. If and when he does that I will execute my moral obligation to him I would be willingly in my obligation to apologize to Roopnarine for any egregious mistake I made against him but in this situation I cannot see how I can apologize to him for a character trait he denies he possesses. I honestly don’t know if that is so. I would expect people to reject things about themselves that are true but they find embarrassing to acknowledge. Roopnarine describes me as an extremist supporter of the Government. I will not request an apology. My route is to deny that claim of Roopnarine. And I am rejecting that painting of me. I have suffered more than any human being in the present government, including Moses Nagamootoo, for my social activism. I have suffered more than any human being in Guyana except Mark Benschop and the three treason accused – the Monroe couple and Mr. Warton. Those four persons were jailed. But there were two attempts on my life. Even my family was victimized. The reason my daughter was refused a journalist opening at the Stabroek News was because her father was Freddie Kissoon. My innocent wife lost her job at GOINVEST just before the 2011 elections. My point is I have given Guyana all my life and I am not going to sit back and watch the new government of APNU-AFC do what the PPP did to my country. I will never allow that. I will speak out. I will fight. I have done that. I have criticized the new government in ways that the new government cannot respond. I have done so in columns, letters to the newspaper editors and on several television shows for different channels. I published my accusation of hypocrisy of the new government extending the barriers around Parliament when in 2011 they voted against the existence of the barriers. I denounced the erasure of the Ministry of Youth. I denounced the continued exclusion of the general public to the four swimming pool the Government controls. I cannot support the 50 percent increase at this time. I wrote that in two columns My point is that I am not an extremist in my support of the APNU-AFC Government. I don’t want an apology from Dr. Roopnarine for assigning me that label. My task is to defend myself. I am doing so now. If this government makes mistakes that I consider are based on power obsession I would let my voice and body be heard. Dr. Roopnarine does not live in Guyana so he doesn’t see the television programs. As a guest of Handel Duncan on the “First Look” morning show on channel 9, in response to a question on the Government whopping salary increase for Cabinet members, I told him that no matter how critical was the APNU-AFC politicians of the PPP regime, they are in power now and power does bad things to people. In my appearance at the Commission of Inquiry, I told the Commissioners I believe in anarchism. I explained to them that it is a philosophy that is extremely suspicious of human’s ability to possess power without it harming the psyche of its possessor. This country needs transformational leaders if Guyana is going to go into the future. If you want my deeply honest opinion, apart from the political culture and political history of maybe just one or two but certain not four or five of the person in authority now, the people in power in the Government of Guyana are not endowed with the political culture and philosophical values that would make them transformative leaders. I hope I am wrong. I would like to be wrong. But I am not wrong Frederick Kissoon