I risk getting a cussing here; I can take it, and give back too. 
I must say emphatically that I'm appalled at the malicious treatment meted out to Mel Carpen here. I don't know Dr Rudy Jadoopat personally, nor do I know more than I see on his interviews, so I won't respond to comments on him.
I do know Mel Carpen. I know he was a PPP activist in Guyana before migrating to the US in 1972. I know that at a time when anti-communism was the pivot of American domestic and foreign policies, it took a lot of courage for an immigrant like Mel Carpen to openly associate himself with the "communist" Jagans and the PPP which the US had driven out of office only 8 years before Mel reached America, and which the US was hell-bent on keeping out of power in those harsh Cold War times.
I know that Mel, unlike most Guyanese immigrants in the US, expended considerable time, effort and money from his pocket to help establish and maintain a PPP support group in the belly of imperialist America.
I know that the Jagans recognized and appreciated Mel Carpen's selfless contribution to the PPP's outreach in the US and to the restoration of free and fair elections in Guyana.
Unfortunately, as a result of cliqueism and malicious "news carrying", the post-Jagan PPP hierarchy put Mel Carpen in its black book. As if that were not bad and hurtful enough, we now see in this Political Forum more calumny about Mel by people who should know better.
I looked at that interview with Dr Jadoopat, and Mel clearly stated at the outset that he doesn't like to talk about himself. Nevertheless, Jadoopat's subsequent questions required answers pertaining to Mel's own activities in the PPP support groups in the US.
It is indeed sad to witness here how old PPP stalwarts are maligned. They do not deserve such treatment.
That's the Mel I know. Thanks Gilly.