My “mansion,” Irfaan Ali’s home and Khurshid Sattaur’s motive

I would advise Minister Irfaan Ali to do just what I did when my home was highlighted in the press by the GRA boss Khurshid Sattaur. If Irfaan Ali has nothing to hide, he should adopt my course of action.
Sattaur wrote a letter in this newspaper describing my home at Turkeyen as a mansion. I responded and Sattaur did not have the courage to take up my challenge. It must have been a huge embarrassment for a man who likes to be known as a confrontationist.
After Sattaur wrote his terrible description of my lower-middle class home, I threw out a challenge to him. He would select his team, my team will come from the Guyana Press and we would inspect all the contents of my home to see if they confirm with the description of the GRA boss. The examination would take in types of doors, furniture, windows, tiles, sinks, bath fittings, television sets, drapes, cupboards – the works. If my home fails to meet the criteria of a mansion, a luxury house or an upper middle class dwelling, then Sattaur has to immediately resign from the GRA. If the consensus is that my home is luxurious then I leave UG and cease to write this column.
Sattaur was trembling in his boots. He ran away from the fight. I don’t have a self-contained bedroom. My daughter does not have a self-contained bedroom. In fact, Mr. Sattaur enjoys those facilities in his home. There is a tiny guest-room. While my dwelling cannot pass as a working class structure, it is definitely not upper middle class at all. I do not have anything in my home that is beyond the reach of a white collar worker.
Instead of putting his money where his mouth is, Sattaur chose to victimize me. He wrote the Kaieteur News on three occasions demanding to know what I was paid for writing my columns.
I was disappointed that top class financial analysts like Professor Clive Thomas, Christopher Ram and Tarron Khemraj among others did not chastise Sattaur. The GRA strong man wanted to prove that I was evading income tax. But a simple reply from these financial experts could have shut up Sattaur.
How much could a newspaper pay me so as to cause Sattaur to go after me as a big tax-dodger? Sattaur was doing the work of powerful politicians. Simple figures could have done it for Sattaur.
Stabroek News was in financial trouble so it began to charge for its online edition. That didn’t help so the paper put on $20 more for the printed version. The Kaieteur News raised by $20 before Stabroek News did so. How much do these newspapers make to be paying columnists super salaries to drive Mr. Sattaur to see by how much Frederick Kissoon was cheating the revenue?
If you examine salaries in the private sector, then, how much was I getting at KN when I wasn’t even full time there? And not one person from the opposition parties, civil society or the human rights community raised a finger in my defence.
Sattaur wasn’t going after more than a thousand billionaires in this country whose wealth is ostentatious, but he went after a pauper like me and the society stood silent. Not satisfied with that, Sattaur sent me eight property tax forms and demanded that I fill them up. The same wasn’t sent to my colleagues at UG or white collar workers in the public and private sectors. I thank Christopher Ram most sincerely for his help in the submission of my property tax forms.
Again, like the tax evasion pursuit, the society didn’t raise a voice about what Sattaur was doing. Sattaur lives to continue his style because the opposition lost the presidency in the 2011 elections.
In this country, only when violations hit them directly do people cry out and they ask for your support. I remember last year October, the WPA was contemptuously mistreated by the Chronicle. Rupert Roopnaraine in his response described the Chronicle as an unfit newspaper and asked the Guyanese people to boycott it. Only when it affected the WPA, Roopnaraine saw the Chronicle as a paper we shouldn’t buy.
What about the years of nastiness and gutter behaviour that the Chronicle was into? For the past five years that paper printed an annual number of two hundred poisonous attacks in its letter pages on my character. This is a very cowardly and hypocritical society. One has to learn to fight one’s own battles.
My advice to Irfaan Ali is to invite a team from the Guyana Press Association, the PPP and the opposition parties to tour your house and after a meticulous examination, submit a public report as to if you have a mansion. I would like to be on the team. How is the swimming pool coming, Irfaan?