Dear Editor,
I am replying to your editorial note attached to my letter (‘SN did not follow protocol in publishing findings of Bisram’s July poll,’ September 14). I hope this letter brings to an end my exchange with Stabroek since I believe Stabroek will adhere to the 2006 polling protocol. I felt inclined to pen these notes here because any mature mind would have cause to wonder about the credibility of Mr Bisram’s ventures given the very statements Mr Bisram has made about himself in both independent dailies for about three years now. When people make these kinds of utterances, the average person begins to question their bona fides
All I did with Mr Bisram is to have done just that. I looked at his statements over the past three years and they just didn’t add up. I could cite serious defects with previous “polls” Mr Bisram said he has done. I did write about how he got it terribly wrong in Grenada when he predicted a landslide for the incumbent and the opposition got the landslide. I know Grenada well because I lived there. One Grenada radio commentator announced on the air that Mr Bisram had not done any poll on the election. Grenada is a small island and polling activities there would not go unnoticed. But let us get back to Bisram’s statements
Now here are some positions from Mr Bisram as contained in letters published in the press:
1. He has never identified the location and leadership of an organization named Nacta which he wrote is the organization which undertakes the polls.
2. In contradiction to this, he told us that he finances his own poll.
3. He refused to name the New York High School he works at because he almost got fired years ago from another job because a person heaped some mischief on him by spreading fictions about him to his boss.
4. He is the highest (not one of) paid school teachers in New York.
5. He cannot identify his field operators because they would be fired from their jobs in Guyana because they stole time off from their desks to do his work
6. He has never identified the universities he has been to and what degrees he has received.
7. He wrote that he took doctoral courses in opinion polling and survey methodology at New York University. This makes no sense in academia. These are courses that undergraduate students take. Why would they be offered at the doctoral level? By the time a student enters graduate studies they should done such courses.
8. Mr Bisram’s friend, Annan Boodram wrote a letter in which he asserts that Bisram is a school teacher and makes up for the time he spends polling around the world by teaching in the summer recess. This is nonsense. The school curriculum anywhere in the world does not operate like that.
This is just a sample of worrying experiences with Bisram. I could go on but my point is that these anomalies cannot be overlooked when one is dealing with a pollster who says he has been teaching for the past 25 years in New York and is associated with a polling organization that has done surveys all over the world for the past 25 years. Hopefully, with the observance of the 2006 poll protocol, Mr Bisram would start answering some pertinent questions.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
Editor’s note
There was no requirement under the 2006 protocol for field operators to be identified.
