Dear Editor,
It was a joy to read D. Ramprakash’s letter captioned ‘Without greater transparency there will continue to be questions about poll’ (SN, May 15). Clearly, the writer has no agenda and presents his views professionally. He does not denigrate the poll or attack the pollster, quite unlike Dr Anand Persaud who condemned the poll and felt it should not be published even before he got answers to his query, and Freddie Kissoon who discredited the poll because he could not verify the employment of the pollster Vishnu Bisram.
The near twenty-year history of the pollster’s record of accurately predicting elections does not matter in evaluating whether the pollster is qualified to conduct polls, according to Kissoon. Only the pollster’s employment and the names of the executives of the NACTA matter in determining whether Bisram’s polls are credible and accurate. Almost all Guyanese and other Caribbean nationals respect my polls and my reputation as a pollster. They don’t need to know the name of my employer. They applaud and have faith in my polls. So I am not troubled by Kissoon’s negative views of me or my polls. I advise both Kissoon and Dr Persaud to emulate and follow the advice of Ramprakash – be courteous and civil to other writers and “be respectful” to me and to the poll until they produce evidence that the findings do not reflect reality and or until they produce findings from their own polls that contradict mine.
