Following a late night meeting on Tuesday through an intermediary, political commentator Freddie Kissoon was returned as a columnist for the Kaieteur News, hours after he was told he would no longer write for the newspaper.
Kissoon today told this newspaper that the meeting was arranged by Mark Benschop and he attended along with publisher Glen Lall and attorney-at-law Nigel Hughes who acted as a mediator between the two.
According to Kissoon instead of his column being published daily it would now be published five days a week. He said this was based on a request by him and as such no columns from him will be seen in the pages of the newspaper on Mondays and Saturdays. Kissoon said at the end of the day he was happy that he stood up for his dignity as “one should not be abused and told that his column has to stop.”
He said he did not go to the publisher but pointed out that the meeting was arranged.
“There was no bitter exchange between the two of us and I must say that Mr Hughes conducted the meeting very well,” he said.
A column from Kissoon was published in today’s edition of the newspaper.
He was on Monday pulled as a daily columnist and suggested that it was linked to the selection of the publisher’s close friend Donald Ramotar as the PPP’s presidential candidate.
“(KN Publisher) Mr (Glenn) Lall called me and said it [the column] has stopped… he didn’t give a reason.
He was very arrogant about it,” Kissoon, who has been associated with the newspaper for the past 16 years, said yesterday. However, he added that he firmly believed the action was linked to the PPP’s selection of Ramotar earlier on Monday.
Lall, however, told Stabroek News the issue was an internal one that the management of the newspaper was attempting to resolve. Lall, who admitted that Ramotar is a close family friend, said that Kissoon crossed the line with a recent column he wrote. He added that things got heated between them on Monday and he decided to discontinue the column.
According to Lall, his issue with Kissoon stemmed from a column he penned last month on the fate of several squatters living close to the Turkeyen embankment. He said that the matter touched him and he subsequently sent two persons, including a reporter, to investigate it. However, Lall said on investigating it was found that what the columnist had written was untrue. He noted that he was upset, since the credibility of his newspaper was at stake and as a result the newspaper carried a retraction.
According to Lall, since then Kissoon had been avoiding him. He added that he was out of the country for several days and returned last Friday.
He said he had not seen or heard from Kissoon but noted that on Monday evening “things got out of hand.”
Lall explained that he was at a meeting when Kissoon attempted to have a word with him.
The columnist was told that another time would have to be arranged for them to meet. He said that Kissoon, in a rage, stated that he could not wait and that he had no other time on hand. Lall noted that he got upset and indicated to Kissoon, in the presence of other senior staff members, that his column should be pulled from the newspaper.
Further, Lall said Kissoon had sent several emails written in bad taste to fellow Kaieteur News columnist Stella Ramsaroop. He noted that this too was one of several issues that Kissoon had pending against him. “At some stage, this had got to stop,” Lall said, adding that “he [Kissoon] more than crossed the line.”
Giving his version of what transpired on Monday, Kissoon said he was teaching at the University of Guyana when Lall called him to a meeting. Lall did not say what the meeting was about. Kissoon said, “I thought that was rude but I overlooked it.”
He later found Lall at the newspaper’s offices in the company of one of Ramotar’s brothers. Lall, Kissoon said, then told him he could not meet with him and asked whether he could wait for half an hour. Kissoon told him he could not, since he had to go back to the university.
Kissoon said that at Lall’s suggestion he agreed to meet him on Tuesday with the proviso that he could not give a time because he had to give evidence in a Mark Benschop court case and he also had work at the university. “He then just said that the column is stopped. There was no explanation and of course after that there were exchanges of words. Very, very loud exchanges of words,” Kissoon said, while adding that both men used expletives during the exchanges.
Meanwhile, Kissoon admitted that there was a private exchange of e-mails between himself and Ramsaroop, but he maintained there was nothing mischievous or vindictive about them.
While saying that the e-mails could be made available, he explained that the exchange concerned the accusation by the newspaper that he lied in the column about the Turkeyen squatters.
The newspaper’s retraction had said that the squatters refuted what Kissoon wrote and indicated that he had never interviewed them. Kissoon, in response, had said he never stated that he had spoken to the squatters and he wrote about what he observed.
Ramsaroop had dedicated a column to the issue in which she said that Kissoon should apologise and should go and “stand in the corner.”
According Kissoon during the email exchange he gave an “analytical breakdown” of what he thought of Ramsaroop as a journalist and what he thought of Lall’s administrative attitude.
Kissoon said he believed that the pulling of the column had to do with the selection of Ramotar as the PPP’s candidate. He alleged that in the past, Lall had told him that he would not allow any criticism of Ramotar.
However, he said he had later written on an incident that involved Ramotar’s son and his nephew and he also wrote about the attitude of Ramotar and his son towards him and his nephew. “Mr Lall called me and told me he resented the article and I told him
I stand by it because I write on other people and if it had happened with anyone else, I would have written about it,” Kissoon said. He added that there was another more recent incident where Lall told him he should write more favourably about Ramotar. He said he refused.
Kissoon said he was of the view that the paper has been giving “subtle” support to Ramotar.
He also noted that in the email exchanges with Ramsaroop, he mentioned that he was asked by Lall to write favourably about Ramotar. “The only thing I would say is that the stopping of the column has to do with the [selection] of Mr Donald Ramotar because that meeting occurred on the same day. It could have been done last week.
It could have been done on Sunday. The coincidence is just too strong,” he added.
But Lall refuted the assertion that the decision to discontinue publishing Kissoon’s column was linked to Ramotar’s nomination. He said that Ramotar is a close family friend whom he had known for a number of years. “Ramotar and my family go way back,” he noted. He said too that at no time had he ever indicated to Kissoon what his columns should include. “I never dictated him to write in favour of Donald, never gave that indication,” he added.
Asked whether Kissoon would be penning columns in the newspaper in the future, Lall noted that the issue had to be resolved before further considerations are made.
For his part, Kissoon said if he was called by Lall he would go “because I think the column serves a very, very important sociological and political purpose to the Guyanese nation.”
He, however, said he would not go back into a situation where there are “no lines drawn, so we [don’t] know where we stand with each other; like, I would refuse in the future to have someone say to me that the column is stopped.”
He did add “if it is stopped, life goes on” and he noted that “there are many, many ways to continue… the column; you would know as anyone else that there are blog pages and some of the blogs are more widely read even more than the daily newspapers.”
Kissoon said too that Benschop has since called him and asked him for him to write for the guyanaobservernews.com and he has not refused.
