Dear Editor,
I refer to your April 18 editorial: “Change at Takuba Lodge?”
While I agree in general with what the editorial states, I have a difference in view regarding this statement in reference to Guyana’s ambassador to Venezuela, Dr Odeen Ishmael: “But ever since Dr Ishmael’s transfer to Caracas from Washington, there has been a sense that he does not fully enjoy the President’s favour. . .”
Why should this be? When Mr Jagdeo was appointed as finance minister back in the mid-1990s, in his first media interview he pinpointed Odeen Ishmael (then ambassador in Washington) as his mentor. This was obviously because Ambassador Ishmael was one of his most respect-ed high school teachers at Bygeval Multilateral School.
I myself attended the same school and was two classes below Bharrat Jagdeo. It was Odeen Ishmael who recruited him and many other youths, including myself, into the PYO in the late 1970s.
Further, Mr Ishmael, as chairman of the Mahaica district committee of the PPP, was the one who recommended the young Jagdeo and championed his case for a PPP scholarship to Moscow. Jagdeo had by this time completed his studies at Bygeval where he passed Geography, Economics and History at the GCE Advanced Level – the only time students at the school were allowed to write this examination. And as all of us at the school knew, it was Odeen Ishmael who guided his studies in both Geo-graphy and Economics.
So, Mr Editor, I cannot agree that Ambassador Ishmael “does not fully enjoy the President’s favour” when the President owes a lot of his success in his youthful years to the guidance of this teacher, historian and diplomat that I personally – like so many others who attended Bygeval Multilateral School in the 1970s and early 1980s – am proud to list as my chief mentor.
Yours faithfully,
Sasenarine Persaud
