Shameful that Diaspora academics were silent over rigging

Dear Editor,

How shameful that Guyanese academics, in the Diaspora and at home, supposedly the intelligentsia and crème-de-la-creme of a society, were silent during the attempt to rig the 2020 election.
Hardly a word to chastise riggers and fraudsters. What kind of education did these academics receive and what kind of morality are they imparting on young minds?
I support Freddie’s excoriation of UG academics on their silence during the five-month ordeal to rig the March 2 General Elections (Nov 17, 2020).

A couple months ago, I had also assailed UG academics for losing their voice during the five- month ordeal. How can people give respect to these academics?
Freddie also chided, and rightly so, Guyanese academics in the Diaspora for not speaking out against the attempted fraud. Only a handful of us, and all from one ethnicity, from the Diaspora condemned the brazen attempt to rig the outcome of the March 2020 election.
One must never allow fraud and injustice to go unchallenged. A basic quality obtained in a college education is to oppose wrongdoings, especially stealing an election.
Yet UG academics and almost all of them in the diaspora were silent to rigging. There were a few, yours truly included, who lent their voice against the rigging, but only a few of us.
Our voice helped to sustain the international pressure on the Guyana regime to respect the will of the electorate.

Freddie is also right to rap the editor of the Diaspora series of SN for not featuring the views of overseas Guyanese on the rigging.
That editor should have encouraged Guyanese in the diaspora to express their views on electoral fraud. She could have collected and collated opinions on the 2020 fraud from among the diaspora as I did.
The editor of SN Diaspora series has the temerity to focus on election issues in America but totally averse to the bold-face attempts at rigging in Guyana. Was the Diaspora editor tacitly supporting rigging in Guyana?

How can one speak out against attempt to undo the voters’ verdict in America but mum on what happened in Guyana from March 2 to August 1?
For those who were dumb during the rigging, it is still not too late to condemn attempts to rig the 2020 election.
Freddie has to be saluted for the courage and principled position he took against fraud. He has tremendous support in the Diaspora for the position he took against fraud and for assailing those who were involved in the rigging process.

In my travels around Guyana and the NY-based Diaspora in conversations with so many, Freddie has the support of the diaspora and local Guyanese in slamming the academic community over their silence on the issue of rigging. Academics should emulate him. The country needs more Freddie Kissoons.
In America, academics spoke out against attempts to undo the outcome of the presidential election that was won by the democrats. Guyanese-American academics and the editor of SN Diaspora series should also have summoned the courage to condemn rigging in Guyana.
One must not be silent to fraud because the party one supports would have been the intended beneficiary of electoral rigging.
One must take a principled position against election rigging regardless of the intended beneficiary. Academic integrity deserves no less.

Vishnu Bisram