WHEN a politician says, “Yes, I know that the government is doing some things right, but we’re in the opposition, so we’re supposed to oppose it,” where does this leave the ordinary citizen who has no private library, buys a newspaper on and off, but is expected to vote sensibly every five years? Analyzing every significant interest in the human spectrum of social existence requires background knowledge for comparison, yet he is purposely being feed premeditative lies and at times explosive fictions that are riotous in content yet politicians get away with it. One would think that after Mein Kampf, which led to the vilest definitions of ethnic groups and was followed by their physical extermination, that there would be checks and balances, and the possibility for legal action if statements made cannot be represented on the grounds of historical and anthropological precedents.
Both Trump and Hitler used bigotry in their principal political tirades; Trump used Islamic extremism among other important popular peeves like jobs. Hitler, on the other hand, used Jewish finance in support of England in the Great War (WWI), and the Jewish presence at the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler pronounced the Aryan master race; Trump, the superiority of America. Both strived on popular grounded sentiments, and embellished them with emotional extremist rhetoric that was not necessarily the whole truth.

BRUSHED ASIDE
Locally, Bharrat Jagdeo’s irrational racist statements, which he faced the court for, courtesy of Christopher Ram, were brushed under the legal carpet after the precedents of 1961- 4. What a legal system! When a youth from Plaisance gave Jagdeo the middle finger, he had him arrested.
In Guyana, the opposition is not blessed with the talent of a Joseph Goebbels; their trump card is a consistent method of casting out easily displaced fictions enveloped by loud familiar logic, to feed to the captive audience of ignorance.
And ignorance, here, should not be mistaken as illiteracy; ignorance can be embodied in a false sense of entitlement that is quite certified. Their method will work, however, with a small percentage, if it is not countered and eliminated by accurate truths.
But there is a bigger vacuum of awareness that should rest in the active consciousness of our young and not so young. We’re coming to the close of 2016, our Jubilee Timeline, but we have not yet dwelt on the landscape of what went before Independence: What kind of world was Guyana [British Guiana] enveloped in between 1939 to 1966? How was the humanity of Georgetown and the rural villages and estates constituted? How did we earn and entertain ourselves, and what were our contentions? What was going on in places like the U.S.A, India and Africa and Europe?

RETROGRESSION
Test it! Ask any student between 18 to 35 about that mentioned period, and hear what they have to say. The nation has just passed through a volatile political period of retrogression, in every sphere, moreso amongst those of its inhabitants that were five to ten years old in 1992, and worse, those from 1998.
Check the average age of the majority of law-breakers that evolved in a politically criminalised country, then ask: How else can they be made whole again? They must first witness the legal consequences heaped upon the political and criminal transgressors of that recent just past period; the chronic devouring concept of the ‘Big Man’ (as in the criminally untouchable) must be eradicated.
And only then will the majority of the focused generation begin to listen; then will they be prepared for the guidance of a new path that their fathers before them honoured. Then will the hard path of industry resonate, and minds be opened for guidance.
But the political atmosphere must first be cleansed; nothing, no planted stone must be left unturned. Thus politicians must elaborate: Every statement supported by clarity; every accusation and defence purged of ambiguity.
This country’s economics is at a fragile stage; it has been that way for more than 15 years. Across the planet, fiscal debate in the face of recessions abound. Get our capable youth to discuss these matters before their peers. Where on social media can economics, new cottage industries that can be activated in the short-term be discussed?
That thinking out of the box will have to be done by the Coalition Government; nothing positive came out of the now opposition for the past 20 years. It will not begin now.

POLITICS OF POWER

The young APNU-AFC Parliamentarian, Jermaine Figueira lamented in June that “the PPP opposes everything, but proposes nothing.” That is evident, and a conclusion of a lack of foresight existing in that group, where the politics of power and not of development is the all-intoxicating brew. This must be made to change, with a cultural shift of analysing propaganda and exposing publicly unknown history. Some people have to be forced to operate in the context of their true selves, and not to escape behind the loud and bumptious corner gaffe for the proletariat.
Who would have believed that Bharrat Jagdeo never designed a Budget? Well, the Finance Minister, in declaring that fact, wasn’t loud enough.
And, speaking of the Budget, I’ve got my peeves and questions, and will pursue answers and address them in the media, including this column.
The new year, 2017, is already upon us and so far, all the government has done is transparent before us, both good and questionable; but more must be done for education in general , and for new and reawakened areas of employment. Technology has devastated thousands of jobs across the planet, and here at home, that must be addressed, alongside the political disinformation corner gaffe. Adjustments must be forced to distinguish between the past 50 years and the timeline threshold of 2017.