Dear Editors,

THE creatures of the PPP, Robin Singh and such propagandist will forever struggle to gain my respect. The reasons are multifactorial, but one such factor is their tendencies to misrepresent the context and meaning of an author’s words. One such author that was recently a victim of the PPP indoctrination machine is Dr. David Hinds. Dr. David Hinds, in his Sunday Kaieteur News column, posited the scrapping of the contentious elections and installing an interim government led by President David Granger. To add clarity, I will quote Dr. Hinds, verbatim, “Scrap the elections; destroy those boxes. Install an interim government led by Granger as President, and the PPP man as Prime Minister.” Dr. Hinds then further stated, and again I will quote, verbatim, “Set up an independent Commission, tasked with structurally overhauling GECOM.” Robin Singh, the perennial opportunistic spin doctor intentionally chose to extract this small snippet from Dr. Hinds’ expostulation, “Scrap the elections; destroy the boxes,” to be used as a disinformation tool while heavily implying that Dr. Hinds committed a criminal offence, necessitating police involvement.

I was very disturbed by Robin Singh’s actions on social media as it pertains to this matter, but this emotional response was compounded when I saw his poorly- written letter in the local PPP media outlet, Stabroek News. Firstly, the two operative words used by Dr. Hinds, namely, “scrapped” and “destroyed” were meant to be taken figuratively and not literally. In this context, they are considered hyperbole. Hyperboles are linguistic tools generally used for the exaggeration of a fact for the sole purpose of emphasis. This intent of the aforementioned words is evident on perusing the entire article.

On examining this well-constructed column, it is evident that Dr. Hinds has grave concerns of possible post-counting violence on “going into the box.” It is these concerns that motivated him to outline his recommendations, using hyperbole for emphasis. It is evident that Dr. Hinds assumed a certain level of intelligence in his reader to understand his intent. The evidence to support Dr. Hinds’ intent are many. Firstly, if Dr. Hinds is concerned about post-counting violence, he would not suggest violent methods (destroy and scrap) to avoid such an eventuality.

Secondly, Dr. Hinds suggested an interim Government made up of APNU+AFC and PPP. Clearly, violently destroying the boxes and scrapping the elections would make that unity difficult, if not impossible. Thirdly, Dr. Hinds wrote of an “Independent Commission” for overhauling GECOM. I am confident that part of this Commission’s remit would be to establish steps to take GECOM forward, or what Dr. Hinds described as overhauling. It is a known fact that one cannot make recommendations if one is not aware of what went wrong. The answers to what went wrong are in the ballot boxes. The content of those boxes are invaluable when undertaking an electoral audit. Clearly, literally destroying the boxes would result in a destruction of any hopes of moving forward. Finally, I am abundantly confident that Dr. Hinds is aware of the legal requirement that electoral data should be kept for at least a year. Unfortunately, I do not have such confidence in Robin.
To further advertise their foolery, Robin Singh and his cretinous mates went on full-scale propaganda mode on social medial; they plastered social media with an image of Dr. Hinds alongside the misrepresented snippet of “Scrap the election; destroy those boxes.” When the said image was displayed on my Facebook timeline, I was not in the least surprised. I have long concluded that Robin Singh’s linguistic skills are shockingly limited; that his comprehension skills are ankle- level shallow, and his grasp of semantics leaves much to be desired. Also, I have long concluded that to resolve Robin’s language limitations is a well-nigh impossible task. To begin with, he is not one that, by any stretch of the erudite imagination, any educator would consider academically gifted. Unfortunately, he has forever occupied the lowest spectrum of scholastic potential. When that is combined with his girth, being a middle- aged man and surrounded by role models, who on the best of days would be considered obtuse, it should not come as a surprise that cerebrally, Robin is at the infantile level. It is with this kind of background that I would humbly recommend that, in the first instance, remedial work be undertaken by him engaging in any book which focuses on basic English. Having said that, I do believe that “English for dummies” should be a perfect start.

Dr. Hinds, please accept my humble apologies for my intrusion. I have a special pedagogic relationship with Robin.

Regards,
Dr. Mark Devonish