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The advantage President Jagdeo has over me

Nov 08, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I have known no other life but one of struggle. I have been struggling for human rights all my life since age 16. I remember in 1989, my wife was in advanced pregnancy and FITUG called a general strike against the Hoyte Government’s budget. My strike relief was $300 weekly paid by Father Malcolm Rodrigues at the CCWU head office.
The era of the PNC dictatorship is over. The glorious days of the Working People’s Alliance are gone but yet the fight to secure a just society for the Guyanese people goes on. It has been seventeen years of PPP rule yet my life of struggle continues.
The most tragic realization for me is that I believe and accept the statement that the PPP’s autocracy is more sordid, degenerate and frightening than the tyranny of President Forbes Burnham. I hope my burdened soul, encumbered mind and tired body would finally be allowed some form of peace after the 2011 elections.
I do hope we have the Velvet Revolution before then but if not, then the dream of countless Guyanese is for a change of government in 2011 when the evil of party domination by the PNC and PPP will vanish away never to return.
One of the reasons why I continue to burden my mind with struggle is the response I get from all kinds of people in this country and in the Guyana Diaspora. People transmit to you encouraging sentiments and they are like fresh roses that never die and they give you hope to continue the battle for a free Guyana.
After President Jagdeo’s vicious, personal attack on me at his press conference on Thursday, I got tons of e-mails, telephone calls and personal encounters urging me to reciprocate in kind. I cannot do that even if I want to.
A while back, after some nasty comments on me by Mr. Jagdeo, I made the point that I cannot go down to Mr. Jagdeo’s level because I have a family that would remonstrate with me for the descent into gutter language.
This is the advantage Mr. Jagdeo has over me. I have a 20-year-old, student-daughter who, like most West Indian youths, lives with the family. I have a wife I have been married to for 31 years. I cannot write personal notes in response to the many sordid slanders PPP supporters publish on me because my family does not share that kind of written culture.
Mr. Jagdeo can speak or publish derogatory statements of the worst kind about me and get away with his action because he doesn’t have a family to restrain him. There is no wife or child to upbraid him for printing or uttering unbecoming words.
Mr. Jagdeo attacked my sexual preferences last Thursday at his press conference but my family would not allow me to go down to that level and make similar charges against Mr. Jagdeo. They would be annoyed. It is for this reason I have so far abstained from answering his accusations.
Mr. Jagdeo is moving towards his fifties. If by that time, he acquires the status of a family, meaning wife and children, then he will see how hard it is for a father and husband to publicly pen sordid, personal attacks on people the type of which came out of his mouth last Thursday. His family would demand moral obligations from him.
I have said all that should be said about his attacks on me in my column yesterday. His unbecoming behaviour has lowered him in the eyes of this nation. It is depressing to think of how the diplomatic community viewed that display of Mr. Jagdeo last Thursday.
Mr. Jagdeo is hopelessly incapable of seeing, much less understanding, the difference between an ordinary public figure and the President of a nation. The presidency is the highest office in the land and it makes a country culturally richer when that office is a receptacle of grace, manners, etiquettes, decorum and civilized values.
Just take a look at what the charm of Barack Obama has done for the image of the US.
Opinion polls all over the world reveal a change of attitude towards the US because of the style and charm of its new President. In his performance last Thursday, Mr. Jagdeo further pushed the face of this tragic, sad nation further into the mud. I say in all honesty, no country deserves a leader that descends to such disparaging levels as Mr. Jagdeo did last week.
There are many before us and there will be many after us who cling to the belief that this country is jinxed.

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