Dear Editor,
Please permit this brief response to Freddie Kissoon’s January 26th, 2022 column, published in the Kaieteur New, under the caption, ” The Walter Rodney family and Kit Nascimento: Notes on class and colour”.
The content of the column speaks for itself but Kissoon’s racist attack on Walter Rodney was predicted in WPA circles.For us, it was just a matter of time. Hiding under a false academic mission to revisit Rodney’s activism in Guyana is his way to cover his most dishonorable pursuit to date, to discredit WPA persons and now Rodney. Kissoon’s attacks on Rodney is to put it lightly, criminal. This trend also follows his opportunism in 2014 when he attacked the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry and then later, in 2020, in the aftermath of the elections, when he sought to use Rodney’s name in attacking people and persons in Guyana. Now his opportunism is out in the open for the world to witness.
It is not my intention here to defend Rodney’s activism which has been working-class and multi-racial, since that speaks for itself in contrast to Kissoon’s astonishing statement: “Rodney’s lack of painful work among the masses.” One wonders who Kissoon trying to please? Even his handlers in the PPPC are likely to have problems with his latest display of instability since this reduces his usefulness to them. Luckily for him, in his fast diminishing baseof readers outside the PPPC, Kissoon seemingly relies on the support of new allies like Messrs Vishnu Bisram and Kit Nascimento.
I conclude by stating, “Those whom the gods want to destroy they first make mad.” Meanwhile, Kissoon should inform the nation about his revolutionary engagement/stand in face of the US invasion of Grenada at the time he was present.
Yours sincerely,
Tacuma Ogunseye
