LETTER BOX: Imagination is often shaped by reality

GUY SCHOLARI: Please permit a space in the letters column of your newspaper to briefly comment on an issue of currency.

I refer to the article titled: ‘A big warning to all Guyanese!’ of the Freddie Kissoon Column of the Kaieteur News dated Monday August 10, 2009.

Mr. Kissoon, in response to an article titled: ‘NACTA Poll: Ramsammy and Trotman trump others in ratings; Jagdeo more popular than government’ in the Stabroek News dated Saturday August 8, 2009, has ‘warned’ the citizenry against accepting the polling statistics and surveys published by NACTA through a pollster named Vishnu Bisram.

If we cannot believe Mr. Bisram’s claim of being a teacher, political analyst, newspaper columnist and coordinator of polls under NACTA, how can Mr. Kissoon make us believe his claim that NACTA does not exist, and Mr. Bisram is not a credible source?

Be it resolved, therefore, that the North American Caribbean Teachers’ Association (NACTA), a New York-based entity founded by several Caribbean educators with no political affiliation, is what it purports to be until Mr. Kissoon or any other researcher proves, beyond doubt, otherwise.

My intention is to neither engage Mr. Kissoon in his denouncement of the NACTA findings or the existence of such an entity, nor validate the alleged findings of Mr. Bisram. I just wish to opine that, and I suspect a man of Mr. Kissoon’s astuteness would agree that the smallest iota of thought or the minutest figment of the imagination is conditioned by something perceived; something experienced; even fantasy is shaped by perception or experience of reality. What is ‘reality’ is arguable, and whose reality is the right one will remain a controversy until the end of time. What is sure is the relationship between perceived or conceived reality and every process in the mental realm.

That having been said, I believe resolutely that if Mr. Bisram’s alleged findings are a mere expression of imagination, then this imagination is premised on some reality. I am not a political analyst or a scholar by the most lenient of measures, but even I can conclude that, given the observable manifestations of ineptitude on the part of the parliamentary opposition, President Bharrat Jagdeo will win the presidential election overwhelmingly if he were to contest a third consecutive term.

Has Guyana progressed under the leadership of President Jagdeo and the government of the PPP/C? Should Jagdeo be given another chance to consolidate progress? These are questions the citizenry can answer for themselves. To intimate that the NACTA poll will weigh heavily on the consideration of the citizenry, influencing it to elect Jagdeo for another term should he pursue such possibility, is an affront to the nation. It is an insult to our ability to reason, assess and make informed decisions as a people. And as a citizen, I take umbrage.