Freddie Kissoon can never ever redeem himself

Mar 26, 2025 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Volta-face! This was my immediate response when I skimmed through Freddie Kissoon’s, “Cheddi Jagan: Still the definitive Caribbean leader.” The ‘ting’ is loaded with laughter and this ‘befits’ the writer himself, Fredie Kissoon. He continues to ‘idiotise’ himself and the PPP, and in this puerile piece, his effort at ‘balancing off’ his decades of venomous anti-Jagan outpourings is woefully hypocritical, seemingly coerced and plain silly.

Editor, I know I may seem harsh, but I beg your indulgence, as I have some pressing points for this Freddie Kissoon. I know that he is under a bond (regarding what to write, and what ‘not to touch’ and ‘not respond to.’ He knows that he is a liability in his new role, as he was the inveterate, consummate anti-Jagan and anti-PPP campaigner. His recent ‘fluffs’ at making restitution seem so phony, that the PPP/C will be better off without him. Freddie can never embrace the PPP/C; he never has and never will.

Now to his sanctimonious Jagan article, and in it, Freddie, as I summarise, adulates (but in a vain manner), the late Dr. Cheddi Jagan as “… a unique Caribbean leader whose inner qualities and refined mind have yet to be attained by most current and immediate past governmental heads around the world.” He, comes over as insincere, as he supports, in a cursory manner, his lofty exaltation of his erstwhile “object of odium.’ He does this by execrating a host of people – Eusi Kwayana, Martin Carter, Dr. Rupert Roopnarine and et al. Please note that his article is bereft of support for his major topic, that is, “Cheddi Jagan: Still the definitive Caribbean leader.” I thought that the piece was supposed to highlight Jagan, as this unique leader and not denigrate a host of people. Now my second occasion for being piqued is the time has come for Freddie Kissoon to apologise for his years of maligning Jagan. I mean his maniacal obsession was of extravagant proportion and frequency. Here I offer a few examples, and I hope that this will cause the PPP/C to do a rethink of Freddie Kissoon in the Chronicle, the very paper he disparaged for decades.

In “Politics: October 5, 1992 destroyed Guyana; can it be reborn?” Freddie wrote that “The revolution on October 5, 1992 deteriorated into partisan, ethnic politics under CHEDDI JAGAN and his wife, Janet, then in what was to become the FIRST INSTANCE OF SEMI-FASCISM in the English-speaking Caribbean…” Wow!

I would have reserved ‘Fascism’ for the likes of Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin), and Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. I mean if I were to equate Jagan with these dictators and never retract my sentiments, then I have disqualified myself from ever uttering a word in the man’s honour, unless and until apologies flow repentantly.

Freddie Kissoon minimizes Jagan’s almost ‘solo’ role in the quest for ‘fair and free’ elections. In this piece, he blurted out that “That is why I think we have to be careful how we treat the significance and importance of October 5. PPP leaders, PPP supporters, PPP Indianized scholars will continue to maximize the importance of October 5. Theirs is a narrow interpretation of the event.” Why?

Because, according to this ‘Congenital Despiser of Jagan,’ “October 5 dissolved these important pillars of democracy. And the erosion did not start with Bharrat Jagdeo. It began the day after October 5. All the reclamations of important values that Hoyte recovered for Guyana that were discarded under Burnham were discarded again under Cheddi and Janet Jagan. October 5 has lacerated the legacy of Cheddi Jagan.”

Quick question then: How Cometh the article, “Cheddi Jagan: Still the definitive Caribbean leader.”?

So much faecal bile from Freddie Kissoon has been heaped on Cheddi Jagan over the course of time that he can nothing compensatory that will be taken seriously. I will close by citing Freddie Kissoon’s claim that Jagan was a most villainous practitioner of violence and even a planner homicide. If you have doubts, just read “Violent when in power, still violent when out of power- Dec 13, 2017.”

Here are some of Freddie accusations that he named as ‘my research.’ “The ‘Son Chapman’ boat that blew up and killed over forty African–(from my research). It seems the bombing of the ‘Son Chapman’ was a (PPP/C) revenge act; (from my research) the arson that killed Permanent Secretary of Premier Cheddi Jagan, Arthur Abraham (and seven of his nine children) – led me to think that Abraham was targeted for alleged secrets he passed on to The United Force, of which his daughter was a big leader.

 

And the big one (verbatim from my research) “ … the editor, Peter Taylor, of a popular newspaper, the Argosy, that was a thorn in the side of Premier Jagan, was almost assassinated at his home. I grew up hearing that was done to blame the PPP Government. It didn’t make sense for any opposition party to kill a nationally effective anti-government editor that was one of their main vehicles. I eventually got to know who were the two men sent to kill Taylor, and who was the female in the PPP leadership that sent them. One of the two men was a close relative of mine.”

I can go on and on ad infinitum. And the conclusion will be irrefutable, that is, no one comes close to Freddie when it comes to the ‘assassination of the character and personage of Dr. Cheddi Jagan. Even if he were to apologise daily for the rest of his days, he will not be able to make any restitution.

Yours truly,

Gaylord Riley

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