IT IS not uncommon to read scathing criticism of Freddie Kissoon’s columns that are published in the Kaiteur News.  Rarely (if ever) has anything positive been published about this columnist, in the Guyana Chronicle.  This letter presents a different point of view. In the column he wrote on March 2, Freddie Kissoon employs a pair of stunning metaphors to express his opinion about the PPP government and the president. “From the deepest, inner recesses of my heart,” he affirms that “Bharrat Jagdeo has inflicted irreparable harm on Guyana.”  And from “the bowels of my soul,” he declares that “PPP’s reign has brought the politics of evil and the evil in power to this land.” Such forthrightness is laudable. His metaphors raise the bar for journalistic writing in Guyana.
With mastery, he shifts from the subjective (believing/feeling) to the objective (scientific). “The scientific fact is that the PPP hasn’t got such people at the top, he writes, referring to two long-standing members of the PPP- Moses Nagamatoo and Navin Chandarpal. The writer’s craft is inimitable.    
Moving from the subjective (believing/feeling) and objective (scientific) mode, Kissoon declares, “I now write the rest of this essay as a trained social scientist and a trained historian.” He then shifts to another plan! Referring to the establishment of the PPP/Civic alliance in the1990s, he declares that that was one of the greater historic moments in political evolution in this territory since the Jagan/Burnham split in 1955. In the next sentence he points out that great historic moment turned out to be “one, big fat, juicy lie.” He makes adequate use of a striking antithesis!
I vaguely remember Freddie Kissoon from my days at UG. I think I might have attended a few Movement Against Oppression (now defunct) meetings with him, on the second floor of a dilapidated Tiger Bay building, and/or at the UG campus. Men of the calibre of Joshua Ramsammy, and Walter Rodney were there. I earnestly believe (pardon my subjectivity) that it was in the company of such men that he developed his indomitable courage (sic!) and unique journalistic flair.