Dear Editor,
With reference to Dr Joey Jagan’s letter captioned ‘A pollster cannot be taken seriously if he is a political commentator’ (SN, December 2), Joey said that a pollster could be biased if he or she made political commentaries (when not conducting polls). But he did not say how the polls could be biased (from unrelated commentaries) and he has not identified any specific biases relating to my NACTA polls.
Joey is wrong. As a statement of fact, pollsters all over the world engage in political commentaries. In Trinidad, for example, pollsters Derek Chadee, Derek Ramsamooj and Selwyn Ryan feature regularly with opinions in the dailies. Prof Ryan has a weekly Sunday column in the Express. In Barbados, Prof Peter Wickham writes regularly in the Nation. In Jamaica, the late Carl Stone was a regular commentator in the Gleaner. In the US, Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, appears regularly on TV and in the major newspapers. He is a frequent commentator on ABC This Week with George Stephanopulous giving his views on American politics. So, it is not strange for pollsters to present their views in the media. I conduct an annual NACTA poll in Guyana that is professionally done.
The polls are not influenced by my opinions or any personal bias and this is substantiated by the fact that all of my polls on elections in Guyana from 1992 to 2006 were accurate. So, clearly there is no bias. I recall a poll in 2005 that found Joey the most popular opposition figure who stood a viable chance to capture the presidency. Does Joey feel that was a biased poll? I also recall a poll I conducted in 1997 that found President Cheddi more popular and likeable than Desmond Hoyte and Forbes Burnham. Was that also a biased poll in Joey’s eyes?
I travel all over Guyana every year (just there last week) and everywhere I have gone I have received only praise for my writings (which are backed up with facts and anecdotes) with readers telling me they look forward for my letters (some are factual reporting). So if I were to follow Joey’s recommendation and not do any commentaries about socio-politico issues, then people would be deprived (and disappointed) of my views on important matters.
If I were to restrict my writing to polling, as suggested by Joey, it means that Guyanese would only see it once a year and know me as a person who only conducts polls, which is not my only field of political specialization.
Joey is irked about my comment about his father (in a response to Freddie Kissoon in KN on revisionism and the West on Trial). I stated that had Cheddi not been a Marxist, he would have been embraced by the West (as Burnham was) and Guyana would have become a Singapore of Latin America and the Caribbean. Joey did not take kindly to that fair and objective critique.
No disrespect was meant to Cheddi. Contrary to what Joey stated, I made it known that the West on Trial was not a myth and this point was substantiated by anecdotal evidence from my Professor, Arthur Schlesinger. So how Joey arrived at the conclusion that I critiqued the West on Trial or attacked Cheddi is beyond me. I think Joey misread my letter.
To me, Cheddi’s most significant flaw was his communist ideology (and this is stated in 20/20 hindsight because in his heyday and even when I was a college student during the 1970s, Marxism was the fad which young revolutionaries embraced). Other than that, Cheddi was a simple, humble, ordinary human being.
He was honest and straightforward. He was caring, compassionate and loving. He was a near perfect human. And like Joey, I agree that the West on Trial was factual.
To conclude, ‘pollsters engaging in political commentaries’ does not inevitably lead to the introduction of biases in their poll findings. And Joey has not offered any evidence to substantiate the contrary claim.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram
