GUYANESE want to build a solid, prosperous, progressive future. But every morning we wake up to encounter our national media, we feel discouraged and forlorn, fed-up of the constant complaining and petty verbal fights.

After pressing President Donald Ramotar to announce a date for national elections, we now see angry folks complaining about the date of polls. This rampant complaining, about every single thing,

leaves the Guyanese citizen feeling depressed.
President Ramotar announced May 11 next for Guyanese to vote in free and fair elections for their next Government. And immediately, political discontents and a slew of activists used media platforms to complain about the date. It’s so ridiculous to witness this crassness that it’s embarrassing writing about it. People questioned if the elections date abides with constitutional rules, or why the date couldn’t be sooner, or a host of other irrational objections.

Complainers litter our airwaves, newspapers and TV stations. The media fail to propagate ideas, sound thinking or constructive critical analysis. Instead the Guyanese nation suffers a daily dose of crass complaining, suffering through the vociferous rants and raves of critics who lack clarity and good sense. The newspapers lack letters from sound-minded citizens constructing sensible ideas and arguments, instead regurgitating letters from one set of complainers, who complain about every and anything.

“Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.” – Dale Carnegie

This complaining attitude of those who take to the national media fuel monsters, like, for example, blowing little inconsequential things terribly out of proportion.
Take for example, the gaff of President Donald Ramotar at a hinterland gathering. The President, in his typical humble, friendly, buddy-buddy style, retorted to a comment from a Guyanese who felt free and open to vent his feelings to the President. President Ramotar engaged with a good ole Guyanese tete-a-tete with the gentleman.

THOSE RECORDINGS
Astonishingly, someone recorded that conversation, and media houses proceeded to lambaste President Ramotar for a non-issue, keeping the story running for days and occupying the consciousness of the nation with a little matter of absolutely no consequence or importance. The national media treated that story as if it was a life and death matter.
Earlier last year, we saw the same thing with a private conversation between Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, and his school buddy.
Nandlall gaffed freely and openly, full Guyanese colloquial style, and rapped, like we all do, with that rich creolese Guyanese flavour we all know so well, our verbal language colourful and meandering through loud laughs and massive hyperbolic exaggeration and the plosive sounds of our harsh verbalisation of life in this vast landscape sandwiched between the immensity of the Atlantic Ocean and the dark density of the Amazon forest. We developed a way of talking, a unique Guyanese way, especially when we’re gaffing, and the minister talked the way we talk to each other, especially man to man, in that macho way.

You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas. – Shirley Hufsteddler

Yet, we saw this recorded conversation blown way out of proportion. In fact, any one of us unknowingly recording our own conversation and listening back to it would be shocked with what we ourselves say in the tropical heat of an intense good ole Guyanese gaff.
But media folks, lacking the integrity to look at the Nandlall conversation with objective thinking, used it for their own personal pleasure, glowing with devilish glee at a Government Minister messing up, using it as a means to prove their irrational complaining point that Government is bad and therefore their crass complaining is justified.
We now suffer as a nation from this politics of revenge and vengeance.
We must teach ourselves the art of forgiveness, as we see with the Rodney Commission, where President Ramotar mandated the Commission’s convening, while insisting that there be no recriminations or revenge or vengeance.
In this act alone, of the way President Ramotar handled the Rodney Commission, paving the way for healing and reconciliation and a clarifying of one of the darkest periods of our history, yet forgiving everyone involved, we see his character, his depth of compassion and his integrity to build a future Guyanese society based on conciliation, cooperation and consideration for each other and a clear forgiveness for our past wrongs.
History will vindicate President Ramotar, as a leader of the Guyanese nation with a heart, with that leadership style that would make the defining difference for our nation’s future at this hour.
But we saw these non-issues take centre stage in this nation, with the citizen shocked at how they played out in the media landscape. While the private media lapped up the story with morbid glee, refusing to see the context of private Guyanese citizens gaffing outside their official office, Guyanese everywhere became inundated with the whole complaining affair. When non-issues become our gravest talking point, something’s gravely wrong.
We face elections, with the Minority Government of President Ramotar facing off against an Opposition that did its utmost worst to stifle the Government from operating normally, since 2011: blocking projects, chopping the meagre national budget (which is less than US$1bln, mind you), and hurling accusations of corruption day in and day out at Government.

“When any fit of gloominess, or perversion of mind, lays hold upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints.” – Samuel Johnson

REACTION OF GUYANESE
The Guyanese people suffered through every day since 2011 feeling their sense of hope turning into dread, with the opposing Parliamentary parties grovelling in their new found power to oppose, attempting to hold the Government to ransom.
But Guyanese love the underdog. We’re a compassionate people, with a fine heart. And as President Ramotar suffered grave attacks and wanton verbal abuse, Guyanese citizens started realising that this beating up on the down-to-earth, humble, friendly President was not only uncalled for, but highly irrational and out of place.
So here we are, in elections mode, and what do we face? Complaints, complaints and complaints!
President Ramotar, the day after the date for elections, made a video statement outlining his Government’s ideas for the future of Guyana, and talked of such things as ensuring that every Guyanese owns his or her own home. That goal is magnificent and would be a world record. This vision of housing is well under way, of course, but to make it a deliberate plan for everyone to own a house and land: that’s ground-breaking. Like Burma carved a new path in the history of Mankind with its Happy Index, Guyana with Donald Ramotar as President could become the only nation in the world where every citizen owns their own home. It’s a magnificent, and realistic, vision.
What we see from the other Parliamentary parties? Only complaints: about the elections date, about use of State resources, about whether Government should do this or do that. It’s enough for citizens to pull their hair out in utter frustration.
Our nation stands at a crucial time in its history, with us just one year away from celebrating 50 years as a nation. But we’ve devastated this country. In the late 1960s and early 9070s, we caused the economic class to flee, and many of them live in the Caribbean, Canada, England and America. People of Portuguese, English and Chinese backgrounds who owned property and ran businesses fled this country back then. We saw an attempted 1960’s uprising in the Rupununni. We came through the ugly 1970s and 1980s when the Jonestown tragedy happened, when Dr. Walter Rodney was assassinated, when a US fugitive set up a cult in Georgetown and carried out criminal acts of political thuggery. We came through all that, including 28 years of dictatorship, and it’s good that our history is being recorded and ventilated at the Rodney Commission.
But now it’s time to move forward. We devastated our human resources, our skills base, our knowledge pool, our human capital.
The re-building is taking place, but we cannot move forward with this constant complaining attitude.
If Government failed at anything in this country since Independence to now, it’s in cultivating a sensible media landscape.
The State Media today must harbour the blame for the state of the national discourse, for the conversations that swirl around citizens in the public square. Government failed to clean up the national media industry, which now operates with a wild west freedom, lacking competence and integrity to play a responsible role on the national stage. The press association seems to be biased and unable to play an objective role.
Government lacks a sound media strategy, and allows a free media landscape that absolutely lacks operating standards. Insisting on self-regulation, media outfits fail to implement professional, world class standards.
In any progressive society, laws and regulations govern media operation. Media operation is a sacred public right, not to be abused and used for personal revenge and irrational vengeance and crass personal agendas.
As we approach our 50th Independence anniversary, we must realise that our relationship with the Media, from the early days of nationalisation and the strangulation of the State media under the Forbes Burnham administration, to today, as we struggle to recover some semblance of media sanity, lost true balance. Government must establish a clear and professional playing field for the independent and State media, including the role of national newspapers, TV stations, radio stations and online media on the morale and mind of Guyanese citizens.
For this, an independent international team could be assembled to draft the landscape for a sound, sensible, professional national media platform that lines up with media ethics in progressive societies, like the US, England, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Jamaica. We fell way back from those societies, in how we exercise our right to free and fair expression.

DAVID de CAIRES
When David de Caires pioneered a new independent media landscape in the late 1980’s, he insisted on objective professionalism. We’ve now lost that, and need to get back on track, starting with Government taking media seriously.
When Moses Nagamootoo served as Minister of Information, with the outstanding Sharief Khan as Editor-in-Chief at the Chronicle, we could have implemented widespread media reform across the society. Instead, Nagamootoo maintained the status quo.
When the Government of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic opened up the media landscape to what it is today, where media proliferates everywhere, we needed to establish a sound media strategy, because now everyone everywhere can access a media platform to say whatever: freedom as a wild horse, with no guidance. Instead of creating the exciting conversations and constructive engagements we aspire to, we see crass complainers hugging the national space, and deeply demoralising the Guyanese citizenry.
And the State media respond with reactionary non-action.
So we don’t see across our nation national conversations around vision, projects and programmes for development, or a celebration of our sons and daughters who excel. This is our most crucial problem: how we inspire Guyanese through the national stage, in the public square, with the conversations that we cultivate and develop. The public square is very different from the private sphere. In private we’re free to say whatever we want. On the public square, we must be responsible in exercising our freedoms, with sense and humane compassion.
This crucial pillar of our democracy, cultivating a sound media landscape that informs, motivates and inspires Guyanese citizens, is the only way we’ll move forward out of the terrible political abyss that resulted in a 10th Parliament that singularly failed the people of the Guyanese nation with stunning myopia, focused not on building, but on the politics of complaining, revenge and vengeance.
The wayward media lapped it all up, regurgitating it back to citizens and the Government and State media became victims, constantly defending or reacting to the complainers.
This atmosphere fuelled the state of play today, and it’s time to transform how we engage each other as Guyanese, how we talk to each other.