THIS is the final installment of my four-part series into the infamies created by some lost souls (in every sense of the word). In part two, I said I would look at the Mahdia inferno and the private media’s reluctance to publish the view of Professor Randolph Persaud. This column is about those two themes.
Where in the world could you find a 15-year-old girl, lit a fire in a dormitory that killed 20 humans, and a group of citizens, no matter how tiny their number, would advocate that the 15-year-old not be tried for murder but arson, she must get counseling and be allowed easy access to the families?
That is so ugly and sickening a display of infamy that in every country, without exception, grieving families and relatives would have gathered outside the homes and workplaces of these misfits and stage a picketing exercise.

I am saying with pellucid forcefulness, no other country would have remained silent if the family members and relatives had seen a letter in the press with such sentiments. The people who penned that sadistic insensitivity would likely have been visited with acts of violence
Let us describe what happened at Mahdia. A student had her phone taken away because she was texting with an elderly gentleman. In a fit of rage, she made an inflammable item, set the dormitory afire and 20 in-house residents were burnt alive.

Up comes a group of persons that the entire Guyanese population in and out of the land, knows as the usual suspects, (TUS) describes the 15-year-old as a child, argues she must not be charged with murder and be given counselling.
The obvious question is, if the State had done what TUS wanted, then what would have happened to the minds of those grieving parents?
They would have seen an alleged mass murderer, happily chatting with her parents and siblings every week in the jail, while they are overcome with psychological torture. To think we have such sick minds in this country brings up the thought that maybe those who made those advocacies ought to be in a lunatic asylum.

I ask you in all sincerity if what I have just described is not, unadulterated infamy. It is worse than infamy. Here is another example where the descent into sadistic psychology is worse than infamy. A government minister is accused of rape. TUS wanted him to be charged with rape arguing that even though there was no virtual complainant and evidence, the minister should still face a trial.

But the same unbalanced minds that wanted the minister charged do not want an alleged mass murderer to be charged with 20 counts of homicide but arson instead. These are manifestations of infamy that are allowed in the press and in society and to which there is hardly any condemnation. Let’s skip over to presidential adviser, Professor Randolph Persaud.
Dr. Persaud informed me that since May his letters to Stabroek News are completely shut out. This is a scholar who is on leave from one of America’s leading universities, the American University.

Do not forget also he holds the prestigious portfolio of constitutional adviser to the President of the Republic. So I wrote two columns about Dr. Persaud’s grievance. Please see, “Is there a lone ranger at Stabroek News,” Wednesday, June 28, 2023, and “Reactions to the Stabroek News controversy tell a sad tale,” Thursday, June 29, 2023.
This infamy has seen no reaction from people you would expect to voice an opinion. What we are talking about here is the descent into the worst kind of dangerous, nasty, political partisanship from the private media we have not seen since the 1960s. When Timothy Jonas was the guest on the Gildarie-Freddie Kissoon Show, I put up on the screen two items for him to see.

One was Barack Obama complaining in an interview on CBS about the damaging role of the media in the US, and the other was a poll taken by three prestigious organisations in which respondents felt that the media is endangering democracy in the US. I now echo the views of those respondents and Mr. Obama.
I believe the privately owned newspapers of Kaieteur News and Stabroek News are on an agenda that is destroying the image of the private, independent media. I go so far as to say, Guyana no longer has a private, independent media. The infamy the Stabroek News generated with its mistreatment of Dr. Persaud has not been met with voices of concern. Why? Because they are afraid what happened to Dr. Persaud will happen to them too.