Dear Editor,
This is in response to Freddie Kissoon’s letter captioned `Mr Ramkarran carries on smartly with views that the Guyanese people ought to reject’ (SN Oct 9) in which Mr. Kissoon took a potshot at me without offering evidence. His comment is a complete distortion.
Freddie claims, among other things, that he denounced the Jagdeo government for withdrawing ads to your paper. My recollection is Mr. Kissoon denounced me for speaking up on behalf of SN on the ads matter.
I wrote three pieces calling on the government to reverse the ad restriction. I recall distinctly that in several columns, Freddie was literally rubbing his hands in glee that ads were withdrawn writing that when KN did not get ads in its early years, SN did not protest.
Freddie refers to me “as a bedfellow of Mr. Ramkarran”. Such a categorization demands a level of intimacy that is certainly not factual and the SN editor should have deleted it unless Freddie provided some kind of evidence. A retraction is in order. I do not think the late David de Caires would have allowed such unsubstantiated comment to slip by. I have a passing acquaintance with Mr. Ramkarran as I do with most Guyanese politicians. I know very little but what others say about Ramkarran. Since from his KN columns, Freddie has indicated that he was acquainted with Simels, should readers conclude he and Simels are “bedfellows”? Hmmmm!
Ramkarran wrote a few columns attesting to the credibility of the NACTA polls and obviously that irks Freddie who feels no one must write anything positive about the polls or Bisram because he has pronounced negatively on them. Freddie has pronounced that Bisram is not a teacher and on the polls’ worthlessness, just as he did with that of Dr Ramharack’s TRPI polls two decades ago after they were published in SN.
The polls accurately predicted the outcomes of elections in Guyana repudiating Freddie’s speculations of the AFC and WPA beating the PNC in 2006 and 1992 respectively.
Freddie writes: “Ramkarran opines that the demonstrations in Iran over the presidential election were a direct attack on the Iranian Revolution”. As a political scientist and historian and as someone who studied the revolution, I see nothing wrong in the statement. Ramkarran is suggesting that the demonstrators in Iran want to roll back some of the aspects of the Iranian revolution that freed Iranians of the dictatorial Shah and his dreaded Savak goons.
Freddie claims “Ramkarran overlooked the rigged elections in Iran”.
But Ramkarran’s column was a direct response to the rigged elections.
And even if Ramkarran feels the elections were not rigged, which he did not say, that is his view and it must be respected. The foundation of a sustainable democracy is the willingness to “agree to disagree” and even be willing to defend the right of the dissenter to express his/her views. Freddie should respect Ramkarran as others respect Freddie’s right to write. I have a contrarian view to Ramkarran on Iran but the man has a right to express his views without Freddie dismissing him contemptuously.
The above makes me wonder how a university lecturer can lack impartiality and genuine academic scholarship in his commentaries.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram
