…the scripted double-talk of opinion makers

Dear Editor
WEDNESDAY August 23rd, I sat and encouraged my family to listen to a Plain Talk discussion hosted by Christopher Ram that included Ramon Gaskin. I know both men at an informal level; Gaskin and I have once before discussed WW2 and the crucial Russian Involvement.

What intrigued me was the dishonesty of some aspects of the programme that were said from a position, construing with an air of certainty aspects of the present Guyana condition. Gaskin was the protagonist, while Ram the antagonist. The script was closed to external interference, thus they held a fixed uninterrupted dialogue; there were no balances intended to enlighten the TV audience.

The economy and the legitimate question of employment and earning power of Guyanese were where it began. This was however a lure, as no creative contribution came from Gaskin, the left wing protagonist of radical socialism as to the development of a pressure group to address the imbalances that affected current employment. For example:

(a)Legislation to determine our dismal construction industry, with bogus contractors, and low interest financing to support standard work, extended to low income home buyers.

(b)Legislation to ensure that the private security sector pays its employees properly and offer them real legal human benefits.

(c) That promoters and entertainment houses follow a legal framework, which prohibits them from robbing talents.

(d) That the cottage industries, cultural industries, artisans etc. be subject to serious programmes of training, soft loans with directives at replacing the inferior merchandise dumped on our market. Instead, ‘Rambo’ Gaskin wants to start another small party. That skit is overworked and in my home we found it disappointing.

(e) There was no reference made to the fact that we have lost thousands of jobs over the past thirty years to modernisation, to computers, modern shipping–the stevedores are gone, to new methods of construction, to the loss of the Bauxite market at Linden, and the marginalisation of small pork-knockers.

Then to the monster of money-laundering and the influx of illegal drug money that have through money washing saturation of cheap goods have wiped out cottage industries like seamstresses and tailors. Inflating real estate values, impoverishing thousands, but was encouraged through indifference by the PPP.

(f) Then to crime, and the inference that the president is ‘soft’ on crime, what does that translate to, more extra-judicial killings. Isn’t it obvious that most of the contract killers created by this society were one time members of this or that legal police ‘Death Squad’? Isn’t it a first that recently prisoners surrendered their illegal weapons and apologised to the authorities, or was the reference made that drug addiction has fueled our crime rate? How many addicts are responsible for murders or were recruited for that purpose? The evidence is there, also, that lawyers and accountants do make a lot of money from the main narco players.

(g) The statement by Gaskin that because of coming Oil Dollars the government will give up on Sugar and Rice, is political mischief.

It echoes Jagdeo; but only recently Gaskin called for the immediate closure of designated sugar factories. He said that “Government cannot continue with its billions a month programme, but it must have plans for the people who will lose their jobs.” That was commendable, though in the article he didn’t suggest how they should be redeployed.
The last insult was when Ram asked Gaskin if he can identify anything good about the current administration; he shrugged his shoulders and indicated… “nothing.”

How could that be? When a PPP Minister had predicted an epidemic in Georgetown; that I wrote letters about complaining about the stench of human filth on Merriman mall; when friends living on Hadfield Street protested the dumping of rubbish in the night by trucks that were identified coming from out of Town.

Georgetown is now transformed, Durban Park is a development; the rain floods are handled better; roads look better; we know where our tax dollars are being spent; the PPP extended a billion dollars to fix G/T and nothing happened; we agree that the City Council is still tremendously dysfunctional; that there are also misfits in the coalition, but far less than the past administration.

There are evident encouraging and easily recognizable physical and attitude changes in Guyana today. I belong to an organisation [ACDA] that has always advocated a national power sharing Governmen. This coalition is what we lobbied for, that we must be active to ensure its success in the national interest is a citizens’ right that we will not surrender.

We will make public noise when necessary. From the Plain-Talk discussion one would believe that people in this country are either born PNC, PPP or UF; this is stupid and unscientific, nor is it a cultural fact,. Thus, we also have to be active with our ‘opinion shapers’ to remind you fellows, that we are not animate play-doh. Not most of us at least.

Regards
Barrington Braithwaite