THE VICE News documentary accomplished its mission to create much talk, action, and activism about corruption here.
Sadly, the journalist Isobel Yeung failed to create the link between the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) government and corruption if her story was to be considered believable.

Yeung also failed to embroil Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo in a scandal that would warrant his resignation, resulting in an investigation into the corruption claims. She, however, ended up vindicating Jagdeo in his most vulnerable moment when his guard was down during a would-be sting operation.

The journalist has, nonetheless, implicated Chinese national, Su, in the middle of the corruption allegations. He could be investigated for extortion, fraud, and other corruption charges as the twisted web unfolds.
What is even more perplexing is that, seemingly, there is no truth in the entire documentary except for the denials.

It would seem that Yeung did her documentary piece fearlessly about Guyana without the protection and credibility of facts, truth, or empirical data.
The truth is, this documentary was not the type of work that a professional and credible news entity would produce. It is also not the work that a muckraking journalist or entity would disseminate to the public.

It was one of the poorest attempts at investigative journalism. It does not even have the privilege of having the backings of the other journalistic principles – credibility, truthfulness, and objectivity.
Firstly, the documentary sought to exploit Guyanese fears about living in a country caught up in a war between the Chinese and Americans for dominance over Guyana’s oil wealth and future in terms of developmental projects.

It failed to make this form of propaganda stick because Guyanese are getting much cleverer and more intelligent about the nuances of development, investment, and growth.
The trade battle between the superpowers will continue, but one would hope that Guyana, a small developing nation, would continue to demonstrate its lack of interest in taking sides but will strengthen its laws and regulations so as to not end up being squished or exploited by either party.

Secondly, one cannot say one is surprised by the Opposition, A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC)’s desperate and leech-like political behaviour. These politicians are gullible and appear to have boarded the bandwagon of calling for Jagdeo’s resignation.

Unfortunately, the APNU+AFC grouping joined by its ex-partner WPA is missing the bigger picture. They are not concerned about corruption or the strength of Guyana’s anti-corruption systems.
They are more concerned about Jagdeo. It is sheer spitefulness, hate, opportunism, vengeance, and political buffoonery. None of the political parties could point out a law that was broken or code of conduct that was breached.

One must ask where the same political and civil society voices were and outrage when the former coalition administration’s Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, was caught in a conflict of interest scandal after he was photographed aboard an aircraft with investors purportedly en route to China in 2016.

Where were those voices against actual and evidence-based corruption scandals that the APNU+AFC government was guilty of?
Thirdly, it would not be alarming if it turned out that the APNU+AFC coalition and certain businessmen close to the opposition had a say in engineering the plot against Jagdeo. Guyanese would not put it past this crop of Opposition politicians to scheme secretly with VICE News against the PPP/C Government.

After all, this thought is justified when one considers how poorly the Opposition party is doing in representing the populace on common issues. Political analysts also felt reasonably that this is a political distraction from the incompetence and aloof nature of the APNU+AFC.

Other analysts say they must be closely watched and monitored by the PPP/C government as there is something up their sleeves. Whatever it is, something is going on with the way this journalist came here, went places, interviewed persons, and left. Maybe, there was a script, a plan, and a plot all along.

Fourthly, the Opposition party wants Guyanese to believe that everyone in the upper echelons of the PPP/C party is corrupt when that is not true. This mistruth is part of the big lie the politicians are still telling their supporters to rationalise their defeat at the last polls.

Also, the APNU+AFC Opposition wants the public to focus on this area rather than on the development that is gripping Guyana in every sector. One cannot help but think that the APNU+AFC also wants Jagdeo off the government scene at any cost.

Finally, objective Guyanese will see no issue with Jagdeo or the systems in place to track and monitor corruption. Additionally, there is no issue with the laws of Guyana in terms of prosecuting the corrupt acts of politicians, businessmen and citizens alike.

The problem with finding and rooting out corruption is that evidence or plausible cause is necessary if one is to be successful. As long as there are deals and investors doing business via the backdoor or under the radar, the authorities must devise stricter systems and design models to catch the illegality when it occurs. The Opposition party is being opportunistic and is clutching at straws.