Latest update April 24th, 2024 12:59 AM
Aug 16, 2009 Letters
Dear Editor,
I am currently in Norway with attention drawn to a number of untruths penned by Kaieteur News (KN) columnist Freddie Kissoon relating to me and the deceased David De Caires in KN dated Aug 10).
I know David as a man of integrity and shared a professional relationship (on polling and reporting for SN) for about a decade. I treasured his advice on my writings although I regret I did not follow everything he suggested. I wish to state unequivocally that the allegations that Freddie penned about David and myself never occurred.
These unsubstantiated allegations are a figment of Freddie’s vivid imagination. It is regrettable that Freddie has to scandalize David’s good name with lies. I was advised repeatedly, most recently in July during my couple weeks in Guyana, not to respond to Freddie. But I cannot allow his lies to go uncorrected.
Freddie has a grandiose sense of self-importance. He is preoccupied with himself and believes he is always right when in fact he is wrong almost all the time in understanding and explaining political concepts.
Freddie writes in a tone that is declarative. There are no ifs or shoulds or maybes. He writes like he is the authority. He thinks what he writes is facts and cannot be refuted. But in reality he writes untruths and a misunderstanding of concepts.
Freddie claims Vishnu Bisram is not a teacher and has never been a teacher. I don’t need to prove to anyone anything about my occupation. My reputation speaks for itself.
For the record, on education, I was briefly head prefect at CHS (Khemraj Ramjattan was a colleague of mine at the time) and did some substitute teaching. I tutored college students at CCNY for several years.
I have been teaching high school students since 1984 in NY. I was also a college Teaching Assistant and a Research Assistant for several years during my graduate studies.
I have been conducting polls in Guyana from around 1989 with Dr. Baytoram Ramharack who founded an organisation named Turkeyn Reseach and Polling Institute. I assisted Dr. Ramharack. Freddie attacked those polls. In years Dr. Ramharack did not conduct polls, I conducted polls under Vishnu Bisram’s brand name including one in 1992. When NACTA was founded in 1994, I was approached to conduct polls for the group under that acronym. I agreed and several teachers accompanied to the locations to conduct polls.
In 1995, NACTA conducted its first poll in Trinidad and predicted a 17-17 tie which was disregarded by other pollsters, the media and political analysts who predicted a PNM victory. The NACTA prediction mirrored the actual outcome.
NACTA also conducted polls in Guyana for the 1997, 2001, and 2007. So NACTA has a long record and common sense dictates that if polls are conducted under that name, then it exists. One does not have to be a brain surgeon to figure that one out.
Since around 1995, at the urging of the founders and members of the organisation, I have used the NACTA label because promoting the organisation, as I was asked, was more important to me than promoting my name or seeking personal fame.
About the esteemed De Caires, Freddie claims that De Caires stopped publishing my polls two years ago. He also claims that one year before he passed away, De Caires found out that Bisram did not tell the “truth” and decided not to publish my polls.
The record would show that De Caires commissioned me in April 2008 (just four months before he died) to conduct a poll – some eight months after Freddie claims De Caires found out that I was not truthful to David. The results were published in May in SN. Something is wrong with Freddie’s head, as everyone else in Guyana has recognised by now.
In August 2008, I conducted another poll. De Caires was very ill and permission could not be obtained to publish the findings as a SN co-funded poll. Instead of not getting the poll published at all while awaiting De Caires’s recovery, I requested the SN editor to carry the findings as a letter because the findings had to do with the PPP Congress which was held in late August. That was the fact and not the untruths penned by Freddie about De Caires and me.
I wish to state David had enormous respect for me and would invite me over to his office whenever I was in Guyana for an exchange of views and to review the questions of my polls.
David never interfered with my work and always applauded my professionalism. He spoke highly of me to several Caribbean media people including to Rickey Singh. In addition, David told me that leading Caribbean reporters thought highly of me as a pollster. David advised me to avoid “politics” – i.e., writing about controversial political issues or figures for he felt it would impact negatively on my reputation as a leading pollster of the region.
I avoided writing about controversial events as much as possible. But David still felt I was dabbling too much into politics. As best as I know, Freddie never had any discussion about me with Freddie. Anything Freddie writes about me and David is misleading and dishonest.
I do not know when Freddie will stop his lies. But I urge readers not to pay much attention to the contents of his writings and do not quote them for scholarly research. He is misleading the public as he does not write with any authority and seriousness. He penned more lies in his fictional writing but it is a waste of energy to expose them. Please accept that there is not one iota of truth in Freddie’s latest salvo against me.
What Freddie is involved in can be called trolling (in internet language) – he is just looking for a response to find inconsistencies in one’s writing. He loves controversy. Freddie thrives in hatemongering and nitpicking, criticising just for criticising sake.
Vishnu Bisram
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