I BELIEVE in the existence of opposition parties, civil-society groups and non-partisan journalism. A society becomes philosophically richer with each passing day, and citizens’ learning curve reaches the sky when a society engages in robust debates and exhilarating polemics.
I believe there is an indefatigable sociological law that argues that a society becomes de-educated, unlearned, morally lost, and psychologically disoriented when society does not engage in educated and intellectualised debate. The scientific conclusion is simply – a society becomes better when John tell Sunil he is a hypocrite for supporting the government of the day and offers his reason why and Sunil responds with equal polemical zest. Why any citizen would not want to have this type of culture in their country?
We do not have that culture in Guyana. Our society becomes debased when citizens only focus on the government while ubiquitous depravities exist elsewhere that threaten the very fabric of society. If you have lived the past 25 years in the world, you would know that the media is so powerful it needs to be kept under surveillance. If you were on Planet Earth for more than 60 years, you would know the media is so powerful that it brought about the overthrow of elected governments in British Guiana and Chile — just to name a few.
Why then the society remains silent on the existence of ubiquities outside of the governmental sphere in this country? No society does that except Guyana. When the Stabroek News was in existence, I read the online comments and discovered there was an overseas Guyanese, Clairmont Griffith, in his 70s from Wortmanville where I was born and grew who liked my Kaieteur News writings. Then when I moved over to the Chronicle, I read his admission in the Stabroek News that he doesn’t read me anymore.
Griffith’s position was simple though disappointing. He liked Freddie Kissoon because he wrote against the PPP government and it is only for that reason he read me. Griffith’s point was simple, though unlearned – I don’t want to read anything Kissoon writes about any other section, compartment, or dimension of Guyanese society except the government.
Griffith’s position can be found in countless and endless Guyanese whose minds are so Pavlovian that they do not want to know about wrongdoings in Guyana, only when those wrong doings come from the government. In the United States, the movie industry, the media, the sports world, Wall Street, and the entertainment industry are so powerful that people want to know if the players in those areas of American life are good or bad people.
They want to read about people in those areas that are not good examples in society. It is the opposite in Guyana. We remain silent or we do not want to know when people who criticise the government are humans who have done things that disqualify them from criticising the government. I could author a book of terrible things that anti-government people have done for which they should have been ubiquitous criticism.
I remember one of the founding members of the Alliance For Change and parliamentarian for that party, Trevor Williams, said on the Freddie Kissoon Show that when he and Cathy Hughes were working together in the APNU+AFC government, Ms Hughes refused to give him the cell number of Minister Volda Lawrence.
Williams at the time held a substantial position in government and wanted to talk to Minister Lawrence. Who was the better person to ask for the number than your fellow AFC executive and that was what Williams did. It was obvious that Hughes used her class mentality to refuse Williams’ request. In any country in the world, there would have been condemnation of Hughes’ expression of class elitism. In Guyana, there was not one comment on what Hughes did.
It was made public that in July 2020 while the election rigging was going on, a top executive in the AFC was so emotional about the APNU+AFC losing that she suggested it was time Guyana was geographically partitioned according to racial demography. There was not one condemnatory comment. At a Moray House symposium in 2020, anti-government activist Melinda Janki told her audience that with the production of oil Guyana would be poorer, because an oil spill would destroy Guyana, so leave the oil in the ground.
This abominable ignorance deserved to be rejected, but Janki faced no critical comment and is now an even more poisonous anti-government critic. The anti-oil lobby wrote a letter to President Ali demanding Guyana get out of oil because it is harmful to the environment and people and kills African people. No one pounced on these people for that racist comment. These are the kinds of anti-government personalities people we have in Guyana.
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.
