INTO the New Year and yet nothing has changed for some. Freddie Kissoon continues to find ways of criticising the Government for every little thing without paying attention to the issues. I read Freddie’s article where he is criticising President Bharrat Jagdeo about his statement regarding the U.S. assistance to Haiti while in Iran, where Freddie expressed the need for Guyana to be silent on the matter, since we receive assistance from the U.S.

This is cause for concern to me because I feel that not because someone helps you out in some way it means that you have to be silent when they do something wrong. That is assisting oppression.

In case Freddie is forgetting, Guyana is not the only country that has voiced such a concern. Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, expressed the concern that the actions of the U.S. are counter to what Haiti really needs. Other leaders have also said that what the U.S. is doing seems to be a quiet occupation of Haiti like what happened in 1915.

While Guyana, like so many other countries are happy for assistance from the U.S., and it is no secret that in the case of Haiti, the assistance provided by the U.S. outweighs the assistance of others, the criticisms have not come from just one source. Reputable reporters from leading networks in the U.S. have also expressed concerns over the matter and we have seen so many being turned back en route to provide assistance to the disaster struck nation of Haiti.

I think what Freddie fails to realise is that it doesn’t matter where the comment was made, but it’s the message that is important. Freddie himself is free to criticise the Government although he is living under what he calls an elected dictatorship, where the freedom of expression is alive and well.

Freddie is exploiting the situation criticising Government just for the sake of criticisms, but it shows that despite the fact that the President was in another country removed from the scene, he was well aware of what was happening in the world to respond in a timely manner, rather than to await his arrival in Guyana to catch up on the news and then offer some form of comment.

Freddie should pay attention to what is happening in the world before he decides to make his half-baked comments and criticisms about the Government.
YVONNE MARSHALL