YOU have to understand the symbiotic relationship between Peeping Tom (PT) and Glen Lall, owner of Kaieteur News. The original role of PT at the newspaper was to write what Lall wanted because Lall didn’t have the literacy reach. It has continued like that the past 25 years.
What Lall wants to be put out there, PT writes. I am a 1,000 per cent sure that Lall requested the anti-Jagdeo piece on civil society in the August 17 issue of Kaieteur News titled; “Jagdeo’s shallow critique of NGOs.”

When you read that crude, intellectually bankrupt argument, you must wonder who is less literate – PT or his boss, Lall, even though PT is an educated person. The relationship between PT and Lall is the most sycophantic bondage I have ever seen in my long, long life.
Lall wanted to respond to Jagdeo’s valid and extremely commonsensical argument that you come to be familiar with in primary school – an organisation must have resources and numbers if it is to achieve credibility and be taken seriously. Mr. Jagdeo had lambasted NGOs for being one-man bandwagons.
Since Lall wanted to get at Jagdeo and to help the one-man NGOs and one-man civil society groups, he let loose PT on the public. But Lall could have done a better job himself and even a school boy could have done a better job. PT’s attempt to rebut Jagdeo is an exercise in raw comicality that PT would get a stroke if his identity is revealed and people know that he has the capacity to write such degenerate nonsense.

PT starts out with the laughable theory that only political parties need constituencies because it is through constituencies they get votes. Every organisation needs a constituency and the role of the constituency differs based on the nature of the entity.
Political parties require constituencies so they can get votes. NGOs and civil society groups have to have constituencies so they can secure funding, do lobbying and penetrate the different layers of society.
It is through constituencies that NGOs and civil society groups are able to achieve their goals because their numbers impress society, especially if those numbers consists of iconic personalities, respected elders, learned scholars and articulate youths and women.
Society and the corridors of power have to listen because you bring something to the table. You bring powerful sections of society whose presence is overwhelming. One such NGO in the history of Guyana was a group named GUARD in the early 1990s.

Here is a graphic example of comicality in PT’s reply to Mr. Jagdeo, and PT for an educated man owes an obligation to his friends and family members and relatives not to write such arid, sickening epistles.
Does he face himself in the mirror? I quote: “NGOs legitimacy derives not from numbers but from the moral or intellectual force of their advocacy. An environmental NGO, for instance, does not exist to serve a constituency but to protect the environment. Its effectiveness is not measured by how many people it can mobilise in support of its cause but by the impact of its work on environmental policy.”

Can anyone imagine a human can write such nonsense? So a lady wakes up a morning and dedicates herself to stopping horse-cart vehicles. But she succeeds only in her village because the rest of the country does not know about her and never heard about her. When she forms a group and attracts constituencies whose job is to spread the word and lobby influential actors then her work becomes successful.

Let’s repeat a section of PT’s words quoted above to prove the asininity in this man’s thought. Here it is: “Its effectiveness is not measured by numbers but by the impact of its work.”
I can’t believe what I am reading. PT is a real slave to Glen Lall. Dear Mr. Peeping Tom, the impact of an NGO comes through its resources and people. When those people and resources are deployed and mobilised in society then, the impact is born.
A political party needs constituencies to get votes. A NGO needs constituencies to bring about changes through pressure on policy-makers. I wish I could enumerate the long list of asininities by this anonymous columnist (he is going to get a heart attack when his identity is revealed one day) but space constraints prevent that.

I will end with the rejection by PT of Mr. Jagdeo’s assertion that the Guyana Human Rights Association is a one-man thing by quoting the anonymous guy once more: “GHRA commands significant influence outside of Guyana and also wields influence with international human rights bodies.” But it wields no influence in its own country, Guyana. How you explain that?

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.