Pull Quote: ‘Here in Guyana, there are four dailies and umpteen television stations; and the new opposition (parts of the private media) continues to fester and rant and rave with its daily propaganda and deceit against the Guyana Government; and this ‘Guyana dictatorship’ does nothing about it’
AS I SAID some time ago, parts of the private media, really the new opposition, are adept at conferring unwholesome and false labels on the Guyana Government and President Bharrat Jagdeo. I would merely mention a few here: Dictatorship, partnership with narco-trafficking, oligarchy, corruption, human rights violation, unpresidential behavior, and the labels go on ad infinitum. It is absurd that the Guyana Government would receive the label of dictatorship. Jeanne Kirkpatrick (1982) distinguishes between two types of dictatorship: Totalitarian, where there are massive government interference in the social and economic lives of its people, and where some set of utopian goals drive this repression; and then there is the tin-pot dictatorship, where the government rarely disrupts the lives of its people, and would only institute minimum repression to stay in power to become filthy rich. Let me focus on the totalitarian dictatorship.

Following Kirkpatrick’s thinking on dictatorship, Guyana does not succumb to any of these labels. And the label of the Guyana Government as a totalitarian dictatorship is anomalous. Before we even attempt to brand the Guyana Government as ‘anything’, we should identify the characteristics of those ‘anything’ labels in other countries where they had set up shop, and where some analyses of their functioning become practicable. Look! In Nazi Germany, an example of totalitarian dictatorship, Hitler purged all political opposition elements outside of his party and within his party.

Here in Guyana, there are four dailies and umpteen television stations; and the new opposition (parts of the private media) continues to fester and rant and rave with its daily propaganda and deceit against the Guyana Government; and this ‘Guyana dictatorship’ does nothing about it. Well! It must be a ‘humane’ dictatorship, if there is any such-like thing. The fact of the matter is there is no totalitarian dictatorship here.

The Nazi dictatorship would not have tolerated anything like Guyana’s new opposition; and that is how it should be precisely, because, by definition, Hitler’s Germany was a dictatorship; and that is what dictatorships do, inter alia. In the context of enabling the new opposition and other opposition elements to practice their trade, and in some cases illicit trade, the Guyana Government’s work is a far cry from any label of totalitarian dictatorship.

And then there was the Reichstag, the seat of parliament in Germany that failed to function as a parliament under Hitler’s rule (1933-1945); in fact, fire destroyed a large section of the Reichstag in 1933. I believe Guyana has Parliament Building that houses the National Assembly and Parliament (when the Head of State is present).

Nonetheless, the new opposition persists in casting numerous aspersions on this institution; but we must remember that the National Assembly is functioning with elected people, and so long as these elected people conduct the people’s business, the prognosis for parliamentary improvement is good. In the best of democracies, parliaments come under heavy attack for not doing this, or not executing that; parliamentary criticisms in democracies are not novel. But just that we know that it is one thing to have a functioning parliament, and another thing not to have a parliament at all. Guyana has a parliament.

So what have we got here in Guyana? There is this presumption on the part of the new opposition to say that the Guyana Government is a totalitarian dictatorship, when this new opposition operates in full glory and with brass face with little veracity and a biased frame of reference; and, indeed, there is a National Assembly and Parliament. There are other characteristics of dictatorial elements we could examine, but for now these two will suffice to show the Guyana Government’s appreciation of the oppositional elements’ functioning in this fragile democracy.

Nevertheless the Guyanese people should start reviewing the new opposition’s daily remarks in the mass media, and make their own judgment; let us also not forget, too, that this is the election season and many of these people hope to attain political stardom through outrageous remarks in the press, a gross abuse of press freedom; and the infamous Guyana Press Association does nothing to curb the new opposition’s journalistic excesses.

Let me say something now about the new opposition’s biased frame of reference. Here, we look at ideas about how we come to learn about the world, and have trust in the veracity or validity of those ideas; this theory of knowledge really comes from a branch of philosophy referred to as ‘epistemology’; and different epistemological ideas involve different ways of knowing the world, and different ways to explain these ideas.

For instance, different epistemological thinking would explain rheumatoid arthritis differently; the biomedically trained medical practitioner may have a concern in how drugs would reduce symptoms through a biomedical knowledge of the disease of arthritis; while the ayurvedic practitioner may have interest in how effectively remedies detoxify the body. Same disease, but the practitioners ask different questions, and come up with different answers to resolve the problem. Nonetheless, which ideas are correct would depend on the truth or the validity of the ideas.

Therefore, when the new opposition presents the nefarious labels about this Government, we have to ask what these people’s interests are and whether their ideas contain truths. Are their labels valid? Ideas should continue to roll, but architects of these ideas and the receivers of these ideas (newspaper readers and TV viewers, etc.), always should find out whether they contain truths and/or whether they contain biases; because the new opposition has no monopoly over the truth, as their rants constitute possibly one epistemological thinking vis-à-vis cherry picking, overgeneralization, and selective observation (see my previous perspectives).