FREDDIE has written several commentaries suggesting that only teachers (professors) are qualified to conduct polls.  According to him, “Bisram is not qualified to conduct polls because he is not teaching anywhere in the world”.  He also stated I am not a professional pollster.

Firstly, Freddie is right that polling is not my profession since I do not earn any income from conducting polls.  I pay my mortgage, put bread on the table for my family, and donate thousands of dollars annually to charities from my salary as a teacher.

It is a falsehood that only educators are qualified to conduct polls – another of Freddie’s fabrications to mislead the public.  To the best of my knowledge about polling, and I am familiar with the names of hundreds of pollsters in America and quite a lot of them in other countries, few pollsters are educators. Dick Morris, who Freddie praises as an outstanding pollster because Dick said the AFC would win the 2006 election, is not an educator. There are no formal qualifications or prerequisites to be a pollster.  There are no certificates or licenses granted by any institution or the US government permitting someone to be a pollster. All one needs to conduct polls is proper training with some background in mathematics.

As I and so many others (including officials from NACTA) have indicated on numerous occasions, I teach in NYC.  So even if Freddie is right about teaching being a prerequisite to do polls, I qualify.  However, Freddie still insists I am not a teacher claiming his research, “utilising the services of a person in high office (who he subsequently revealed in another missive as a New York Times reporter – no name given) showed I do not teach anywhere in America or on the globe.

I advised Freddie it would have been smarter to ask a NY-based Guyanese to check into my status instead of asking a NYT reporter who has no link with the community.  Freddie followed my advice and made a public call to the leaders of all the political parties and editors of all the media to check with their NY based friends on whether they can confirm I am a teacher in NYC.  They recognised the stupidity of his call and wisely ignored him.

Now, to put the matter to rest, I confess I do not teach in NY. I worked as a cane cutta (and I am proud of it) at the ‘Freddie Kissoon sugar plantocracy’ in NY.  That still does not disqualify me from conducting polls because I received the proper training as a pollster and have been practicing my skills for almost 20 years.

Readers must have been reading my polls under the NACTA brand since 1996 and prior to that as the Vishnu Bisram Poll.  The NACTA brand first appeared in Trinidad in 1995.  My teaching colleagues requested that I conduct my polls under NACTA to help publicise the newly formed organisation.  As a person involved in selfless activities and since the idea of polling was more important than publicising my name, I acquiesced to the request to use the NACTA brand.  Hence the NACTA poll instead of the Bisram poll.

With regards to training in polling and social science field research, I was schooled at CCNY, New York Univ., and the Graduate School of CUNY where I took courses in Maths, Econometrics, and Statistics.  Some of my professors were Gary King at NYU (now at Harvard Univ), Prof Zeev Maoz of NYU (now at Jerusalem Univ), Prof Gujarati of Baruch College, Prof Niftci of CUNY, etc.  The late Kester Alves was a student in my class with Prof King. Dr. Baytoram Ramharack also received the same training under Prof King and Prof Maoz.  My practical experience was in NY where the professors required field work surveys.  I obtained more experience working with Dr. Ramharack in Guyana from around 1989 thru 1995).  Incidentally, I believe Dr. Ramharack published his early polls under his name and subsequently under TRPI because, like me, he was interested in promoting an organisation.  Dr. Ramharack and I taught together for several years before he accepted a promotion and moved on to higher education.

There are no formal requirements to be a pollster. It only requires proper training.  I believe I received adequate academic (with my several graduate degrees and doctoral research) and practical training as a pollster.  I am not aware of Freddie receiving similar training and is certainly not qualified to assess my polling work which has been thoroughly professional and beyond reproach. I am yet to be wrong in my predictions for all the elections in Guyana. I let the public, not untruthful Freddie, be the judge of my polling record.
VISHNU BISRAM