I CHECKED my cellphone around 7 AM yesterday (Tuesday) and saw I had a missed call. It is routine for me to reply to every missed call. Someone had communicated. I returned the call, and the person asked if I had read a letter in Stabroek News (for Tuesday, yesterday).

I said no, since I hadn’t read the newspapers as yet. I get up early in the morning, and my routine is to feed ten—yes, ten cats. Then I go to the newspapers.
Here is what he said to me, “Freddie, I would like to see your reply to Ram. I would like to see how you handle it. You must do it.”
I read the letter and here is my reply. Unfortunately, Mr Ram’s contents in that public correspondence do not gel at all with the contents of his interview on The Freddie Kissoon Show three weeks ago on Father’s Day.

Two things to note about those contents. Mr Ram asserted that David Hinds should not be sprouting racism and went on to make some damning criticisms of Hinds.
Secondly, Ram openly advocated for more tolerance, more reaching out between people of different political beliefs. Regrettably, the tone of his Tuesday Stabroek News correspondence does not travel along that pathway.

I will now look at the weaknesses in Chris’s outline. I will use the format of quoting him and placing my response alongside. Q is for quote. R is for response.
Q: “Aubrey Norton repeated the show of its party’s resilience on Sunday evening with a huge turnout at its 2025 elections campaign.”

R: I simply do not understand what meaning Chris ascribes to the word “resilient.” Is a party in a resilient mode when it loses its talent and best-known faces like water from a cascading fountain? Is the PNC really in a resilient mode? Every independent and dispassionate analysis points to a denuded PNC that is facing an electoral crisis. But how resilient is a party in multi-racial Guyana when it lacks a multi-racial visage? Never in the history of the PNC has its Indian shelf been so bare.
Q: “With a huge turnout.”

R: Chris should never have used the word “huge,” because any schoolboy will tell you that when the PPP is ready to launch, you will have to find another word to describe that attendance.
Q: “Treat Norton with disrespect and you disrespect all the 217,920 persons who voted for the PNC.”

R: The 217,920 persons who voted in 2020 did not vote for Norton, because he wasn’t the face of the PNC. And what makes Ram think that, after five years and the damage done to the PNC under Norton’s tenure, those numbers will stick with the PNC? More importantly, if one disrespects Norton and, in so doing, is flippant about 217,920 voters—then by the same logic, Chris, in his constant disrespect for Irfaan Ali, is contemptuous of the 233,336 Guyanese who gave him their vote.

Q: “It must trouble the PPP/C that for all… the demonising of David Hinds, that the PNC-R, or APNU could attract such a crowd.”
R: Has the PPP demonised David Hinds? I live in this country and, given the nature of my work, have to read what the Ministers say about other people. I don’t know any Minister that has demonised Hinds. If rebutting the “spouting of racism” (Chris’s own words about Hinds) is considered demonising someone who generates racist demagoguery, then I’m afraid they should be proud of their demonisation efforts.

Q: “The Ticket (his name for the APNU) … addressing this pillar (the Freedom of Information Act) will make the society more open, more democratic and more vibrant.”
R: That Ticket tried to stop Guyanese from having their votes counted in 2020 and if that Ticket wins, there will be no freedom, justice, or democracy in Guyana because there won’t be a free election in 2030. Even Chris Ram’s own newspaper that he is very embedded in, the Stabroek News, has opined in several articles over the past five years that the association with the 2020 attempted rigging will cost the PNC and AFC dearly.

Q: “Norton, Fernandes, Hinds and others will pose a serious headache for the PPP/C.”
R: So, the long-experienced PNC had to wait until June 2025 to get an inexperienced, non-achieving Amerindian woman to defect to the PNC to bring diversity to the party? It has to be a naïve understanding of Guyanese politics to say what Chris has uttered above. If Norton, Fernandes, and Hinds can attract multi-racial votes, then we have to urgently redefine the definition of what a multi-racial organisation is.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.