Mr. Vishnu Bisram’s reply in his letter captioned “I did not intend to cast aspersions on Dr Jagan” (08.03.07) to Janet Jagan’s accusation against him of gossip was downright pathetic. It goes to show the type of scholar Mr Bisram is. He is easily scared by the outburst of Mrs Jagan. Mr Bisram’s response to Mrs Jagan is replete with profuse apologies over what all Guyanese know to be true about Dr Jagan’s heart attack. Mrs Jagan accused Mr Bisram of gossip when he wrote about corruption under Dr Jagan. Bisram opined that the severity of financial perversity may have triggered Dr Jagan’s heart attack. Mr Bisram is saying this in 2008. We who live in Guyana knew about this at the time of Dr Jagan’s death.
It is important that writers put down their thoughts in printed form so that when later leaders of the PPP continue with their caricature of history as the present ones do with the events of the sixties, the alternative interpretations would be there. This is the hurdle my generation had to endure. We only had the “West on Trial” to lead us into the valley of truth. It took us into the chasm of lies and deceit. Thankfully, the present society in Guyana has access to reading materials on the bankrupt policies of Dr Jagan throughout his career, and which are largely responsible for the tragedy that has been concretized in our collective psyche.
Many of us knew that Dr Jagan was under tremendous mental strain, given his age, over the cancerous rise of corruption in the government he presided over. In all honesty, Dr Jagan never personally condoned these massive acts of corruptions but at one point he gave up because he was drowning in a cesspool of financial pathology created by his protégés. We all know now that that rivulet of financial venality and ugly growth of graft that sent Dr Jagan to his death has become an ocean thus the pronouncement of Transparency In-ternational. And it is getting worse with each passing day. Dr Jagan’s world had collapsed at the time he died.
He couldn’t believe that the mandarins he took into his party and nurtured out of semi-literacy would have turned out to be the people that have devoured his international image. His heart just couldn’t take the relentless burden. Day after day, Dr Jagan had to deal with complaints of corruption. It was depressing for him because the world knew what was happening.
The great people in foreign lands who stood with Dr Jagan over the past forty or maybe fifty years were seeing that his government was corrupt. No one can definitely say that this brought on the heart attack but it
not be taken out of the equation. I know of instances in which financial deviousness was brought to his attention and he just couldn’t cope; he gave up in the end. History saved Dr. Jagan by intervening. If he didn’t die, he would have ended up as a leader that people would have classified as just another failure in government.
In reply to Bisram, Mrs. Jagan cited the case of Asgar Ally who Dr. Jagan dismissed. This country has no evidence to show why Mr. Ally was removed. Mr. Ally has said on countess television programmes that the PPP must supply the evidence. But interestingly, Mr. Ally was ousted one day after President Jagan returned from abroad. It meant that the materials that were the proof of his wrong-doing were supplied by the very people who we all know are the ones that are facing accusations of corruption. One of the explanations for Asgar Ally’s expulsion from the government was that he was planning to seek the deputy leadership of the party. It was said that he miscalculated.
Finally, Mrs. Jagan repeats the mantra of – “provide the evidence.” All PPP leaders shout this from the roof top. No Guyanese is so foolish as to fall for that banality. The police aren’t going to act on the documents. Did they in the Kellawan Lall case or the Nirmal Rekha investigation? Secondly, who in the Government is going to move on a high-profile PPP leader? The science of incestuousness will prevent that.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
