I HAVE no particular feeling about people picking on the government of the day, I mean that is their right. But what should come into focus is the intention and who is doing the picking. I heard an opposition politician from ANUG say that public health delivery is in a mess.
I do not agree. I think the Georgetown Hospital has some really excellent service that my wife and I have benefitted from. Context is important as I argued in my last Friday piece. It does not generate widespread interest when opposition politicians use acidic language to describe the government. The first thought that comes to your mind is: “the opposition looking for support.” That is their raison d’être. They “badmouth” the government so they can get support. In that context, you understand the negative vibes opposition parties give off.

It is another matter when more persuasive actors in society– the press, civil society, NGOs, academics – speak the language of the independent mind and shape their behaviour within a democratic framework, but their double standards are unbearable. They need exposing for one fundamental reason: they tend to be more influential and persuasive because people will not dismiss what they say as opposition ranting.

The amount of exposing I have done against such hypocritical national actors since the PPP won the 2020 poll can fill volumes. And I keep writing about them because they keep on expressing their hypocrisy. How much more can we write on these people? The entire world knows that the Guyana Human Rights Association, the Transparency Institute – Guyana, Red Thread, the GTUC and a school of individuals, including Dr Bertrand Ramcharran who once worked in the UN Human Rights Commission, did not speak out against one of the most tragic and sad moments in the colonial and post-colonial history of Guyana — the 2020 elections.

Above, I noted that though I have written voluminously on them, I am still writing because their threats to democracy are expanding. Let’s examine recent manifestations of the minds of these people.
On Sunday, September 22, 2024, Dr Randolph Persaud published a letter (the first in five months) in the Stabroek News (SN) as a response to an editorial in that paper.
Dr Persaud is a formidable scholar who worked at one of the top 15 universities in the US where he has published a number of books on international relations, some of which are on the reading lists of many universities. He is the adviser to President Ali on global affairs and is head of the National Defence Institute. In any country, a newspaper would give adequate coverage to such a person.

The SN guillotined the letter to 150 words when the original letter was 1,000 words. A scholar of the class of Persaud had his letter chapped by 750 words, but right in the same letter pages was a letter of more than 1,000 words by GHK Lall who writes a daily letter in SN. Mr Hamilton Green gets a letter published each week of which the words are always more than a 1,000.
How can people in this country not see this descent into political journalism by the private media as a serious threat to democratic stability? We talk about the power of government, but the media has enormous power. That is why it has been referred to as the fourth estate, meaning the fourth peg of power in a society.

It is ironic that Dr Bertrand Ramsarran should refer to the government as characterised by a creeping autocracy when it is the other way around; there is a creeping autocracy in this country, the real creeping autocracy and not the fake one that Dr Ramcharran wants us to believe in and of which he has a connection to.
There has been a creeping autocracy in this country that involves the private media and certain well-placed civil society groups involving certain women rights organisations. It was this same Dr Ramcharran who sent me an email that I have retained and will keep forever. In that email, he asked me not to criticise Mr Mike Mc Cormack, the forever head of the Guyana Human Rights Association.

The real creeping autocracy missed the pen of Dr Ramcharran when two manifestations of it took place last year. One is the revelation by the eminent Guyanese, Mr Ralph Ramkarran. He said that for calling out the convenient activism of certain civil society groups (read that to mean anti-government activists) he was given a good cussing down. The other exhibit of the post-2020 creeping autocracy was when the SN bluntly refused to publish Dr Persaud’s letters, telling him he should not attack civil society. I have been writing about this real creeping autocracy since August 2020.
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.