IF you are a columnist in Guyana, you end up postponing pieces you have in mind that will never see the light of day because the cascade of political depravities demand that you write on them to educate people, and those items you wanted to ventilate get lost forever.

Each time I decide on a topic, I pick up the newspapers and my interest goes in a different direction. I had a topic I wanted to ruminate on for Monday. It was on the abominable injustice against African people by African leaders including trade unions during the advent of the ERP(Economic Recovery Programme), better known in academic terms as structural adjustment, during the Hoyte presidency.

That was my article for (Monday), but I got sidetracked by two occurrences: one was the publication of a workshop on human rights, by of all people, the Guyana Human Rights Association.
So, I looked at Monday. Then I had planned today’s column to look at the possibility of severe decrease in the PNC’s parliamentary seats if its August congressional voting is characterised by shenanigans.

But here I am doing something else. My column today is a response to what I consider utter nonsense in understanding the nature of politics in societies riveted by ethnic, cultural and class competition by a Stabroek News’ (SN) editorial last Sunday.
I believe these political articulations of SN are written by people without any training in political theory, thus, what one gets is immature analyses that lack even an elementary understanding of human nature and the nature of politics.

My daily columns could end up just being analytical responses to the mediocrities that pass as political analyses by SN, based on the frequencies of those intellectual limitations.
But one must write to counter these falsities because even if one person believes those arid outpouring of SN, then you have one mind that has been captured and that one mind is entitled to be freed and be enlightened. Public intellectuals seek to free the captive mind.

So the Sunday editorial ridiculed the President and Vice-President for their assessment that certain civil society groups operate with anti-government bias. The question that needs attention is: could there be evidence-based research that there are such groups in Guyana? The answer is a reverberating yes. There is also evidence that you have pro-government civil society groups.

To argue that there are pro-government civil society entities and there are no anti-government NGOs is to display not only ignorance, but ignorance of basic human nature. The SN itself describes the Private Sector Commission (PSC) as pro-government. It ran an editorial rejecting the PSC having a seat on the board of the Sovereign Wealth Fund or the Natural Resource Fund because the PSC is close to the government.

It is the natural order of things in life that if a society has pro-government groups, it will also have anti-government entities. In the post-World War II world, there have been and are media houses that were/are pro-government and anti-government. Media houses in Chile in 1970 to 1973 were part of a campaign to oust the elected president of Chile.

In Guyana from 1960 to 1964, there were media houses that sought to remove the elected Cheddi Jagan administration. Which person on Planet Earth does not know that Fox News is pro-Trump and anti-Biden? Which world is Stabroek News living in? In Guyana, the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News are anti-government
The existence of pro-government organisations and anti-government civil society actors in any country is elementary sociology that high-school kids learn from their textbooks.

So SN ridicules the President for saying the following: “If you look at … some of the associations like the APA…they operate purely from political bias, they operate in a political motive.”
How can SN write such drivel when this is the reality of modern politics? Organisations have political motives that lie in the direction of the sitting government, and there are organisations that have their anti-government bias.

What is wrong with the president of a country saying there are groups in the society that are against his administration? What becomes of the value of evidence-based research?
A civil society organisation in Guyana, the head of which, Mr. Lincoln Lewis of the GTUC called upon President Granger who was a candidate in the 2020 general and regional elections to use his presidential powers and cancel the poll.

So why can’t the president accuse Mr. Lewis of being against his government? SN went on to criticise Vice President Jagdeo for saying certain NGOs want to have a monopoly voice. In which country do you not hear such criticisms from the President or Prime Minister? Really, this is unmitigated ignorance of basic politics.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.