I WILL  persist in proclaiming the truth that Guyana is democratic and free, and, indeed, constantly on the move toward consolidating democracy.

I concur with former U.S. President John Kennedy that the enemy of truth is not the lie, but the myth.  I am talking about the myth that Guyana is a dictatorship, implying that Guyana exhibits a number of characteristics peculiar to a dictatorship.

Among others, some of these are: no free and fair elections; sanctions against people who oppose the government; a one-party state; no fundamental freedoms; societal-wide censorship; genocide; forced assimilation; total control of people’s lives.
Jeanne Kirkpatrick (1982) makes a distinction between two types of dictatorship: totalitarian and tin-pot dictatorship. Using Kirkpatrick’s line on dictatorship, Guyana does not embrace the new opposition’s label of Guyana as a totalitarian dictatorship.

And, indeed, the label of the Guyana Government as a totalitarian dictatorship is anomalous. Nazi Germany housed a totalitarian dictatorship, whereby Hitler cleansed all political opposition elements.

I previously stated that “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 dictatorship does, inter alia. In the context of enabling the new opposition and other opposition elements to practise 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).”

Guyana can boast of having four dailies and umpteenth television stations; and the new opposition (parts of the private media) disseminates its daily propaganda against the Guyana Government, and quite frankly, they are well within their rights to practise their trade in this democracy.

Nevertheless, this so-called ‘Guyana dictatorship’ ‘pays no mind’ to the new opposition’s propaganda. Perhaps, Guyana has a ‘humane dictatorship’ after all.

The new opposition has no monopoly over the truth; and, invariably, what they present are really myths, unjustified opinioned statements, which really are the outcomes of cherry-picking exercises, not incorporating any form of structured knowledge, and certainly, not evidence-based.

Let me refer to a piece I wrote on “Cherry Picking and Bias Make Great Bedfellows.”

I noted: “Babbie argues that when a person searches for patterns among what we see around us, we frequently take for granted that a few unrepresentative cases really are evidence of some general pattern; in doing this, we overgeneralize. Babbie believes that a danger of overgeneralization is that it could result in selective observation. How so? Well, if you believe a pattern exists, then you would persist in searching for those cases that match this pattern, and ignore those that do not.
Don Lindsay refers to this as cherry picking, where we only present those cases to suit our own biases, supporting our own pre-existing beliefs. This is exactly what some in the Guyana political crowd/new opposition do as they conjure up new labels as ‘elected dictatorship’ ‘fascism’, ‘corrupt state’, ‘state supporting torture’, etc.
Let me just say that while “cherry picking” is inappropriate to draw general conclusions, we must not ignore those individual cases of torture, human rights abuses, corruption, etc., alleged or otherwise.
And look, there is corruption in some quarters in this country, something that is characteristic of many public bureaucracies.  Nonetheless, this is something that requires elimination; but please, let us not present it as if it is cancerous across the body politic.
For if this was the case plus applying some ingredients of dictatorship, then their ubiquitous influences would reach out and touch both the traditional and new media in horrendous ways that would transform it into some kind of ugly subservient creature.”

With this, I would say that all Guyanese should work toward consolidating Guyana’s evolving democracy, rather than using selective observations and overgeneralizations, generally, “cherry picking”, in the mass media and elsewhere to advance this discourse on democracy.