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Every Guyanese should read David Cole in the NYRB

Apr 11, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – As I was about to drive off, Mrs. Dawn Holder-Cush (DHC) said to me, “Freddie, you are the most forgiving person in the world.” I was nonplussed. What was she talking about? She repeated it all the while having an intestinal smile which betrayed a tiny spark of cynicism. See my column about the encounter with DHC – Monday, March 22, 2021, “Mrs. Holder-Cush and thousands like her must put country first.”
Obviously, I asked her to explain. Still with the tiny smile and ocular cynicism, she said that the PPP threw filth on me yet I have forgiven them with my support during the election saga. The exchange with DHC took place last month, and I will go to my grave not understanding the connection between the repression I and my family faced in the Jagdeo/Ramotar era with my rejection of rigged election in my country.
My email is [email protected]. If you think what I did from March to July in 2020 constituted a forgiving attitude towards the PPP, please let’s have a discussion. My cell is 614-5927 but I don’t think you should call me for such a discussion. Your argument has to be well-laid out so a phone discussion is out. Email me and offer your analysis. I want to see the polemical points that are convincing.
I don’t think your argument will be efficacious but I kindly ask you to show me your adumbration. For now, until I hear from you, I will justify my position on the March 2020 election by citing the philosophical thinking of David Cole, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the April 2 edition of the New York Review of Books (NYRB).
If any two organisations in the world are antithetical in the way they see American society, it is the ACLU and NRA. The ACLU is one of the most formidable human rights fortresses in the world. The NRA is a right-wing body whose insensitivity to human suffering through gun violence is unbearable. But Cole takes a unique position on legal action which has been currently taken against the NRA by the Attorney-General of New York.
The AG of New York is seeking to dissolve the NRA as a non-profit organisation saying it is run by corrupt people who are milking it using its legal non-profit status. Here is a long quote by Cole on the issue; “I, and the ACLU, believe that the First Amendment protects everyone, including those with whom we disagree. If the rights of speech and association are to be meaningful, they have to be afforded to all, not just to those whose views we like. The ACLU has long defended groups whose views it finds repugnant, because the First Amendment is the lifeblood of our democracy. If the New York Attorney General can seek to shut down the NRA because of the wrongdoing of some of its leaders, what is to stop governors in red states using the same power to close down organisations fighting for racial or economic justice if some of their leaders are corrupt?”
Now here is a position of mine on Donald Trump that some readers will scream out, “Freddie are you for real?” One day in the kitchen with my wife, I told her that I don’t think the words Trump used to the protestors who subsequently stormed Capitol Hill legally constituted violent incitement.
I read those words over and over and there were subliminal undertones but the actual words were not loaded with violent descriptions. The Democrats wanted to impeach Trump for those words and they did. But who knows one day in the future, when a Republican-controlled Congress may not do the same thing to a Democratic president.
You cannot apply laws and policies based on political vendettas. They will come back to decapitate you one day. DHC was not the first person to see a connection with my denunciation of rigged election and support for the PPP. Read the Chronicle during the five-month election saga.
There were letters vilifying me and the same theme ran through all of them – “Freddie, the PPP did terrible things to you, now you are in bed with them.” So what is the other side of the coin? What are DHC and these people actually saying? Here it is – “Freddie, support us to stay in power because the PPP did bad things to Guyana. But by “staying in power,” they mean ruling Guyana forever. If my memory serves me right the PPP lost two national elections. Permanent rulers like Burnham and, the PNC don’t lose elections. They rig them.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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