Dear Editor,
MOST times I’d rather not get involved in any intellectual debate with Freddie Kissoon, since I find him very irrational, inconsistent and contemptuous. Today I had no choice but to ignore that inclination since from his Saturday column, I strongly believe that Freddie is trying to hoodwink the Guyanese electorate. I sincerely hope that Freddie, a known pen for hire, doesn’t take it too personal since this response is not directed at him; rather, it is aimed at his handlers. In my opinion Freddie clearly operates under the directive of his paymaster Glenn Lall, who himself operates under the directive of his political masters, the PPP. We can ignore his many boasts of exposing the PPP. This is not the complete truth, since negative investigative reporting was more of Jagdeo, with whom he had personal issues and the PPP being collateral damage.

I did a missive last week wherein I provided the evidence of Freddie’s biased attacks on Mr. Granger and the APNU+AFC government, while completely ignoring Irfaan Ali and the PPP. This comes against the backdrop of him claiming to be unbiased, aiming for a minority government and the fact that the elections will be close. As a result, any rational person would have anticipated equal critique of both major parties to achieve the above objectives.
My attention was drawn to his column which titled, “Irfaan qualifications: What is moral judgement?” On examining the headline I anticipated an academic elucidation of Irfaan Ali’s qualifications supported by intellectual reasoning and sound moral judgement.

Unfortunately, that was not the case and as a result I felt compelled to respond. Freddie commented on the court case in which Ali is presently involved, regarding his academic qualifications. I will take a snippet and quote Freddie verbatim,”The controversy is dead and gone because Ali now has a doctorate degree from a top university recognised by the world. There can no longer be any legal process anywhere in the world that can resort to abrogate his doctorate. He is now a qualified person.” Am I surprised to read such hogwash emanating from Freddie’s biased pen? No. What Freddie is positing is that one can falsify one’s first degree and use said false degree to acquire other degrees, including a doctorate. Once the doctorate is acquired, then the false first degree loses its illegal status and becomes legal, hence, taking it beyond the purview of the courts. Using an analogy, a drug lord can invest his illegal money in legitimate businesses and once that is done, the illegal money becomes legal, hence making money laundering laws redundant. Does Freddie really believe what he wrote? If he does, then he seriously should have stopped writing last Thursday, as he had promised. The fact is that academic fraud is a serious crime as I highlighted last week and there are no steps one can take, who was involved in academic fraud to legitimise it. As a result, all of Irfaan Ali’s qualifications would be illegitimate as a result of an illegitimate first degree. I guess that Freddie did his research before he wrote his column and was able to locate the West Demerara University from which Irfaan Ali got his fraudulent degree. I do wonder if he can share it with Anand Persaud of the Stabroek News who spent hours looking for it.

Freddie Kissoon then went on to one of his anecdotal evidence-based nonsense amalgamated with his usual gossip. In essence, he wrote that someone entered UG without the requisite qualifications. He demanded to see said qualifications when he had no authority to; the person then obtained a degree in economics and ultimately in Masters at a British university. Freddie himself admitted that the student was admitted through the initiative of David De Caires. If Freddie cannot see the fallacy and folly in his argument then something must have been terribly wrong at UG to employ him for 26 years. Firstly, admitting someone to a university who does not meet the minimum qualifications is not unusual.

It is a policy practised in the UK to allow students from underprivileged backgrounds an opportunity to gain access to a tertiary education and a chance of upward social mobility. They not achieving the minimum qualifications is not down to lack of academic ability, but moreso a lack of opportunity. Compared to the well- to-do students, they would have gone to poor quality schools and may not have had the riches to have private tutors, etc. Once they are accepted, no student or lecturers can demand to see their qualifications since it is none of their business. If Freddie was reading my letters he would have seen that I wrote on it on many occasions with a view to improve underprivileged students’ access to UG. I asserted this as one of the crime-prevention strategies. The key point is that the student did not mislead the University of Guyana. The University of Guyana used its discretion, which it is entitled to do to admit the student. The student did not gain entry to the university by claiming to have qualifications that she did not have, or fraudulent qualifications from a fictitious university. Therefore, this cannot be compared to Irfaan Ali’s act of falsifying his first degree.

Before I close, let me ask Freddie a few pertinent questions, but before I do please permit me to go back a few years. As a lad I enjoyed reading the newspapers, therefore, every Saturday I would go to the National Library to read the week’s collection of newspapers. One day, which was years ago I read of a University of Guyana lecturer who misled the university that he had a Phd when he did not. The university rightfully demoted him for fabricating his qualifications. I forgot the incident and the name of the lecturer until a few years back when the lecturer wrote a disparaging column on Cuba-trained doctors. This column got Bharrat Jagdeo pretty upset and he had a real go at Freddie in the dailies. He brought up the incident of Freddie Kissoon lying that he had a Phd when he had not.
He wrote that Freddie went to the extent of being addressed as Dr. Freddie Kissoon. He then argued that Freddie desperately wanted to be addressed as doctor, hence is jealous of these Cuba-trained doctors. Then I remembered what I had read when I was a teenager and remembered it was Freddie Kissoon. I then did my research, something Freddie is averse to and discovered that Dr. Vishnu Bisram, the gentleman who does NACTA polling and who attended the University of Toronto around the time of Freddie Kissoon, wrote a long epistle as to why Freddie never got a doctorate. My questions to Freddie, is your reluctance to objectively critique Irfaan Ali’s academic qualifications be down to the fear of the blowback from Bharrat Jagdeo? Are you protecting Irfaan, since you do not wish to be considered pot calling the kettle black? Please put forward logical arguments why my suppositions as to why you are not objectively analysing Irfaan Ali and providing negative commentaries are all wrong?

Regards
Dr. Mark Devonish