Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter in your paper of Saturday, May 10 by someone who signed his name as Dr Anand Persaud (‘Concerned about poll published in SN’). Last month this same writer made some caustic comments on my writings and on the polls of Vishnu Bisram. In that correspondence, he informed us that he is a doctor in applied science. I responded by requesting that you ascertain from this person if his identity is real. That meant where he lives, where he works. The same gentleman is given space again and has not provided the answers I posed. He had to read that missive of mine enquiring about his status because from what he wrote last month, then it appears he follows my writings.
Maybe there is no Dr Anand Persaud. Why would he constantly comment on me and Vishnu Bisram yet refuse to offer details of his true existence? I insist once more than both Stabroek News and Kaieteur News send out e-mails to these writers demanding verification. It is an ugly sociological deformity in a country for the only two independent newspapers in a nation to have their letter pages manipulated by people who are ghost writers. By what logic could one argue in defence of such implausibility? Again, I would urge you to ask Persaud to state if he is a real person.
If he avoids your inquiry (as it appears he did mine), then he is a masked writer and his mail should be left unopened
There is an editorial note attached to Persaud’s letter on Vishnu Bisram. In all honesty, in all sincerity, Mr Bisram would not get away with the secrecy that characterizes his professional life in any other country, not in the least in the US where he lives. Only in Guyana do you find some of these weird things. I have absolutely nothing personal against Mr Bisram. I have never met him. He doesn’t seem to hold obnoxious views on society and politics. In one of his letters, he observed that President Jagdeo is a good president. I don’t agree with him but he has every right to hold that belief. My deep and very deep problem with Mr Bisram is the mystery that surrounds his professional/public life. The facts are there for the editorial staff of Stabroek News to read for themselves. They are contained in several items of published correspondence with me. Here are some answers from Mr Bisram that would not be accepted in any other Caribbean country.
1. He cannot disclose where he works either part time or full-time because he is afraid that some wicked people may want to undermine his integrity with his employer. According to him, someone working as an advisor with President Jagdeo once tried to get him dismissed by inventing nasty stories about his political life. I ask the Stabroek News which newspaper would accept this explanation from someone who has published a letter in the Guyanese newspapers that informs readers that he does polls in dozens of countries, has been doing that for the past ten years, and is commissioned by highly respected Caribbean politicians to do so.
Yet this extremely busy person cannot tell us where he works in the US. Why haven’t these wicked people pursued him so far? It appears that they are not interested in him because he travels constantly and is free to conduct his projects in several countries across the continents of the world (as he puts it in a reply to me)
2. Mr Bisram continues to refer to himself as the polling director of an organization named, NACTA. My indirect searches (through my friends) in New York have had no results about the existence of this organization. Mr Bisram is inflexible on this question – he would not give names of its leadership, and other details
3. Mr Bisram admitted that no academic staff at UG had worked on any of his polls. One would have thought that at least on one occasion, he may have wanted to bring one of them on board. The programme in social work in the Department of Sociology involves constant polling
4. He admits that he could not give any names of his field workers in the past because according to him, they should have been at their desk working for their employers while they were out doing his work. He is afraid they may get into trouble if he makes any disclosures. The least said of this statement the better
5. Mr Bisram appears to be a wealthy person. He offered details of his travel plans which take him to a large number of countries conducting surveys but in an astonishing revelation, he wrote that a majority of his polls are funded by him as part of his studies. Why should newspapers print the poll results of someone who conducts personal surveys? But more importantly, what are these studies that Mr Bisram is doing? When is he going to tell us about his discoveries about the countries he studied? We cannot get answers to any of these questions from Mr Bisram. Finally, he did inform me that he would personally disclose his place of employment if I did not print it. I agreed but so far, I haven’t heard from him. The Stabroek News owes its readers an obligation to let us know some of the details of the professional life of Mr Bisram because this is the newspaper that has given him his public life.
Yours faithfully,
Fredrick Kissoon
