ON this day, 50 years ago, Bholanauth Parmanand, 45 years at the time and father of five children along with 17-year-old Jagan Ramessar were shot and killed by soldiers in No. 64 village after they stood in front of a military vehicle that had seized the ballot boxes in the 1973 elections. The vehicle drove away and both men ran behind it and were shot dead.

Today, the PPP will observe the 50th anniversary in Berbice. There will be a special edition of the Gildarie-Freddie Kissoon Show on Tuesday night in which three of Parmanand’s children will relate their life story individually. How did they survive the days and months of their father’s death? Who took care of them afterwards? Why did they leave Guyana and what are the circumstances and factors responsible for them reaching the age they now have?

Unfortunately, because of her age, Mrs. Parmanand will not be on the show. 50 years ago, these two men lost their lives in the struggle for the right of Guyana to have free and fair elections. Forty seven years after these two men were killed by the security forces, another man was shot and killed by the police on March 6, for protesting the rigging of the 2020 national poll. Devon Subhan was shot seven times by the police in Cotton Tree in Region 5 while a teenager; Annuradha Sukhai was shot but survived.
I remember Gerry Gouveia saying on an election watch programme hosted by me and Leonard Gildarie that GECOM was responsible for that young man’s death. He died on March 6 when GECOM was in the throes of a conspiracy to tamper with the results of the election. It was beyond anyone’s imagination that what happened in Number 64 village in 1973 could have taken place in 2020, 47 years after.

I will never forget those words of Gerry Gouveia and I could never put down on paper how I felt when he spoke. I saw election rigging and the violence that visited those that protested in 1968, 1973, the 1978 constitutional referendum, 1980, 1985 and 1992 elections and the election related violence of 1998 and 2001, the latter morphed into the killing fields of Buxton. I could never have believed that in the 21st century we would see what happened to Parmanand and Ramesser in 1973 would occur in 2020.

What I saw from March to July 2020 has changed my life forever. There are no similarities between the pre-2020 Frederick Kissoon and the post 2020 Frederick Kissoon. I am long gone from the Frederick Kissoon I was before 2020. How could Guyana be so unchanging that we witnessed the long years of struggle for free and fair elections in which men, women and children were brutalised only to see that same old tragedy again in 2020?

What is wrong with the nationality named Guyana where men and women with a good educational background could even bring themselves to utter the words of freeing a teenager who allegedly murder 20 humans? How could any sane Guyanese openly call for the immediate end to oil production where that industry holds out a future for untold thousands who have been experiencing poverty before their generation and now their own generation?

How could people with education and status in society in this nation remain silent over the rigging of the national election in 2020 when many among them saw what happened in 1968, 1973, 1978 1980, 1985 and 1992 and 1998 and 2001 and saw how close we were to the abyss? Is there something congenitally wrong with the Guyanese nationality? I will be interviewing the children of Parmanand on Tuesday night. If anyone from Cotton Tree is reading this column, please put me in touch with the family and relatives of Subhan and Sukhra. My email is fredkissoon@yahoo and my cell is 614-5927.

I always wonder why after the PPP came into power in 1992, it never sought to name something in Berbice after these two 1973 martyrs or even offer a Berbician a scholarship to a top university outside named after these two martyrs. There is still time to do so. I will like to leave a few lines of a song I like very much, “Winter in July” by Sarah Brightman for Parmanand, Parmessar and Subhan. I once dedicated these lines to a Cuban doctor I know who could not find work in Guyana and died senselessly when a lunatic driver knocked him down on Homestretch Avenue.
“We may not know the reason why
We’re born into this world
Where a man only lives to die
His story left untold”