THEY say in life you must never say, never. But I am saying never and emphasizing it here. No one knows what life will bring tomorrow. We live in an existential orbit where there is space to plan for what we want, and where we want to go, but the sphere of the unknown has always been with civilization.
Intrusions we never could imagine, visit us and the shape of our lives take on different dimensions; that is why they say we must never say, never. But I am saying, I am never going back to my previous political life because I have become a new person since March 2020.
I want to be that new person and I believe the room for manoeuvrability that life allows us will empower me to proceed on a journey that will sustain my new existence. I am on that journey now, and if you know me then you can see the new pathway I am on. So, I am never going back to the Frederick Kissoon of my UG student days, the Frederick Kissoon of the 1970s, 1980s, and the Frederick Kissoon that I was for over 55 years. March 2020 opened my eyes. It was an epiphany. It was my Road-to-Damascus moment.
I have spent over 55 years in struggle for a progressive, equal, free, philosophical, racially united Guyana. That crusade brought me into associations, relationships, friendships and camaraderie with Guyanese of all ages, all types of class positions, all categories of cultural/ethnic backgrounds, all shades of ideological orientations. Bonds were formed with large numbers of souls that I embraced and trusted implicitly and explicitly.

I was introduced to philosophy at an early age. I was a 16-year-old PPP polling agent in the 1968 general elections and after that I ended up as an employee with the PPP-owned Michael Forde bookshop. It was in that place philosophy took hold of me. Whoever ordered the books for the shop had a liking for philosophy, because a large number of the orders were books on philosophy. So, I read Socrates, Plato, Marx, Sartre over and over trying to understand what these men wrote. It is not easy to understand philosophy texts. I read my best philosophy book, Martin Heidegger, “Being and Time” four times when I was at McMaster University before I understood what he was saying about the purpose of human existence.

I would steal philosophy books from my workplace, take them home and read from morning to night, eschewing the normal happenings in the Kissoon household. It was philosophy books that shaped my worldview. I became convinced that humans must have justice and that justice must not be class based and that the poorer sections of society must be protected and served by the state to achieve their social elevation. I became an anarchist as a UG student, despising power in itself.

My life as a radical left-wing person consisted of the belief that Guyanese must be able to vote for the organization of their choice and that power must never be ethically or class based. I opposed every government in Guyana from 1968 to July 2020. That was my life and it brought me into contact with an untold number of Guyanese whom I believe at that time shared my idealism. I came to respect and admire those persons.

From 1968 to 2020, I embraced a one-dimensional existence, one that was based on the struggle for rights over wrongs, and the need to bring the poor out of poverty. I never had any sense of the awareness of the ethnicity of the humans I socialized with.
Then came March 2020. I realized that the past 30 years, I didn’t know people at all. I realize that in March 2020 I was one of the most manipulated humans that came into existence on Planet Earth. People that I struggled with had set aside a purpose for me. I was to be used in a game of class and race pursuit. One can say in March 2020, over 55 years of multi-racial, working-class activism came crashing down. All the repression, oppression and sacrifice I endured for over 55 years just vanished in one month, the fateful month of March in 2020.

In the March 2020 elections, I voted for an Amerindian politician leading an Amerindian-based party. I wanted to see small parties play a role in governance. The election was won by the PPP and I accepted that. I had no choice but to accept that because the right to vote was what I fought for. Then I discovered that those I embraced for the past 25 years did not accept the 2020 election results because of race and class, values I never had any use for. I was cruelly manipulated. I now can see the light.