I ADVANCED the theory after the 2023 local government elections (LGE23) that the mainstream media do not have a propagandising effect on the Guyanese people.
I adumbrated the position that, given the almost insane daily condemnations of the government by the Stabroek News (SN) and Kaieteur News (KN), it was impossible for the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) to win the LGE23.
Pick up any issue of those two newspapers and the Guyana Government and its political leadership from 2020 to 2023 were demonised to the point you were led to believe that Guyana was not a democracy, and the PPP leadership consisted of hard-line dictators. LGE23 revealed that not only did the PPP win but also picked up substantial votes in constituencies that traditionally voted for the PNC.
Those newspapers and certain civil society groups like the Guyana Human Rights Association were not effective in swaying people against the PPP. I am positing the theory of a changing Guyana where, in a country with a very young population and the ubiquity of social media, the anti-government mainstream media are not as effective as they were 50 to 60 years ago.
I am convinced in my mind that the young people I see every night on the seawall when I am there with my dog have never read an SN editorial. Here is a huge fact that I once mentioned in one of my Chronicle columns, and I am suggesting to you that you reflect deeply on this fact because it is a large revelation that will help every human in Guyana understand the different country, the different world we live in right at this moment.
I urge you once more to take notice of this fact. Here it is. I have written for the Kaieteur News for about 30 years. Several times in my pieces, I noted that I am an old-fashioned guy without a smartphone, without a Facebook account and I enjoy my music through playing CDs on my discman.
In just one programme on the Freddie Kissoon Show, I mentioned that identical fact. In the space of two months, I received 7 discman players with people bringing them into Guyana for me. Can you contextualise this fact? What does it tell you about the source people use in order to get information?
We are in an election campaign, and nothing is going to stop SN and KN, the Guyana Human Rights Association, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), among others, from demonising the Guyana Government.
It will go on until September 1. The day before the election, all campaigns, public meetings and media comments on the campaign must stop. But the SN and KN are going to get around that regulation by commenting on governmental policies, which are different from mentioning party politics.
On September 2, the election result will reveal a PPP/C victory, and my political theory, which I have laid out here, will be proven to be correct.
The PPP/C will win because the fertile, anti-government minds in the private media do not influence the way Guyanese see politics. As I noted above, we are living in different times in Guyana and the world today.
We cannot discuss political theory about a changing Guyana without looking at a crucial factor that Guyanese must put into their calculation when they read, look and listen to anti-government critics.
That factor is credibility. What do you think goes through the mind of this young population when they read KN? Each day, the headline is EXXON robbing Guyana. This is the weirdest descent into nihilistic journalism since newspaper printing began.
How can any decent, sane mind tolerate a newspaper that for the past 5 years has carried the same subject each day as its headline? What credibility does that newspaper have in the eyes of the nation?
It is the same with civil society groups that were silent on the bizarre attempts to rig the 2020 election that lasted not for five days or five weeks but for five months.
Guyanese will not assign credibility to organisations that tell them everything is wrong about the government, that Guyana is not a democratic country and its leaders are bad people, but these very anti-government minds haven’t a clue what democracy is about and in fact have anti-democratic instincts.
To sum up, my theory is two-fold. One is that in this society, people can no longer be expected to drink the propaganda that the private media feed them, because the private media in recent times have lost that influence in society and one of the reasons for this is that the interest of the young population lies elsewhere.
The other side of the theory is that in Guyana, anti-government critics cannot be effective once they have no credibility.

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.