Jagdeo upbraids Freddie Kissoon over Cuban doctors’ comments

Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo has taken a swing at columnist Freddie Kissoon for what he said was a slanderous article about the Government of Cuba and the medical scholarships it provides to countries, which appeared in the November 18, 2016, edition of Kaieteur News.

According to Jagdeo, Kissoon has accused the Cuban Government of fraud perpetrated on the countries to which it offers medical scholarships, and the doctors that have been recipients of that scholarship programme of being “murderers, or potential murderers”.

In a statement to the media, Jagdeo said his office has rarely responded to any of Kissoon’s “lamentably illogical and spurious defamatory and inflammatory fulminations,” which he said, seem to emanate out of a mind that has long since lost any reason. However, this latest harangue against defenceless persons who have no means of protecting themselves from his defamatory accusations has hit a level so low, the statement noted.

Jagdeo said that after 30 years as a lecturer at a university, Kissoon has never produced “even one peer-reviewed publication, although he claims he has; but this

has been disproved.”

The statement said that the vile and irrational ramblings in the Kaieteur News, Kissoon has denounced a nation that has, despite its own internal problems, generously provided other Third World countries the wherewithal to develop a strong personnel corps for their health sectors and disparaged and consequently demotivated the entire corps of doctors that came with all their bright optimism to serve their country and their countrymen.

There are real achievers and intellectuals who focus on positivity and on optimising their capacity for greatness and then there are the naysayers and doomsayers who snipe and carp at those greater than themselves, whom they cannot aspire to emulate. Kissoon is of the latter breed whose tirades against anyone who has achieved a greater status than his (which is almost 100% of the population) are signs of a rapidly-deteriorating mind, Jagdeo said.

“The Office of the Leader of the Opposition denounces Kissoon’s depraved onslaught against the approximately 800 doctors who have pursued their studies with diligence and have now returned with a commitment to serve their country. Correspondingly, The Office of the Leader of the Opposition urges our young doctors not to be demoralised by Freddie Kissoon’s inane ramblings but to pursue your profession conscientiously and serve the people with the assiduousness with which you pursued your studies.”

The Office of the Leader of the Opposition in its statement also expresses great appreciation for the many successful cooperative partnerships it has enjoyed – in and out of Government, with Cuba and other nations.

The Party called on Kaieteur News to issue forthwith an apology to Cuba and to the doctors who have been slandered in the basest, most reprehensible and slanderous manner by Kissoon.