propaganda press! state sponsored, people powered.

Facts that would not go away
The PPP leaders, most of the ministers of Government and President Jagdeo hardly miss an opportunity to denounce the private media that criticize the government. Listen or read any major speech and you are bound to hear either an emotional outcry or a political cussing down of the private media. What you should not expect is any point for point challenge from any of them.
It never occurs to these people that the media is not pulling things down from the skies and broadcasting them. The media is presenting hard facts about official wrong-doing, political perversities and bureaucratic incompetence, all of which are coming from a political party and government that refuse to meet these facts head on.
So far, in the sixteen years of PPP rule, as far as this writer can recall, there are only two occasions in which top leaders in government have found the courage to reply to their critics. Their explanations have holes but nevertheless, they have confronted the controversies. One is PM Hinds’ position on the government’s refusal to end the state’s monopoly on radio.
His outline was that Guyana is not ready for the opening of the radio spectrum because we should bear in mind how radio has been misused in places like Rwanda and the consequences were horrible. No political observer would take this observation seriously. The unacceptable dimension in that position is that it paints Guyanese politics in a good guy and bad guy perspective. On both sides of the racial and political divide there has been nasty rhetoric. Both major political parties are guilty of the sort of conduct that induces their supporters to accept extremist language.
The other is President Jagdeo. No doubt stung by the rising tide of criticism over the government’s refusal to inform the nation’s lawmakers and media about the identity of one of the biggest, foreign investments of his presidency – the potential Marriott name to a new hotel – the President fought back by announcing that the investor will be named after the financing deals are clinched. Like PM Hinds’s Rwanda excuse, this one has too many holes too. The Marriott Hotel by the Luckhoo Swimming Pool was made known by the government three years ago.
If a group of investors cannot successfully negotiate bank loans for their Guyana project the past three years, then how much more time do they need? Much, much larger sums do not take that long; certainly not in New York. Another faulty aspect of the President’s explanation lies in the fact that the Government Analyst Department has been demolished and a New York-based engineering firm is installing new sewage pumps in order to facilitate the construction of the hotel.
All of this while the settlement is yet to be concluded. Reality may bypass the hotel because the banks may not fund the venture. With these kinds of reasoning, no wonder the PPP Government and the Office of the President do not challenge the media on the contentions the media brings out daily about undemocratic behaviour of the political elites.
The Government of Guyana has to be one of the most barefaced regimes in the world. Constantly the media is berated for exposures that consist of hard, brutal facts that will not go away. The list is longer than our three major rivers put together but yet the cry goes on that the media is out to paint this government in ways that have consequences for the international image of Guyana. The laceration of Guyana’s image is done by the government itself. Let us sample the list. Mr. Joseph O’Lall was fired for incompetence. O’Lall has gone on record as saying that he never was given the opportunity to defend himself.
He cited as proof Prime Minister Sam Hinds who was at the meeting with the President when Mr. Jagdeo dismissed Mr. O’Lall from his CEO post at the Guyana Energy Agency. He asserted that the President did not allow the PM who rose to his feet to defend him. When contacted for a commented, the PM told this columnist that he would not object to be quoted in this newspaper as saying that he does not wish to comment on Mr. O’Lall’s citation of him. Prime Minister Sam Hinds was not willing to deny what Mr. O’Lall said about Mr. Jagdeo. But there is more to come about the self-destructive nature of the Government of Guyana.
The official position for the reason of Mr. O’Lall’s dismissal was incompetence. Yet a public official holding a far more sensitive position than Mr. O’Lall was found guilty by an investigation of the Guyana Revenue Authority of signing more than fifty duty free letters that were not legitimate. Up to this date, that individual has remained in the job. I am contending that there is no other country that would happen except Guyana under the Jagdeo presidency. All the badmouthing the PNC Government gets from PPP leaders with Mr. Clement Rohee constantly writing about PNC dictatorship, no PNC leader would have tolerated that.
I looked at the television when Mr. Jagdeo was addressing a pre-Phagwah show, and he made the point to his audience about his concern for doing the right things for the future of the country. What future can a country have when one of its top public servants can sign more than fifty bogus duty free letters and not be disciplined? Is that progress?
Sometimes you want to know why the leaders in government do not choke on their words when they rant about the media. A Ministerial advisor had no legal permit to export wildlife. He did so. And he remains in the same job. Maybe it was the media that invented these two fictions. I suppose we should apologize to President Jagdeo. Maybe it was the media that invented the refusal of President Jagdeo to sign ten Bills that his party, the PPP, labouriously debated in Parliament. To date, the President has not offered an explanation to the nation why he did so.
A school boy could read the Constitution and see that it requires a vote of a two-thirds majority to allow the Ethnic Relations Commission to come into being. The ERC life ended and President Jagdeo has prolonged it. That one, the media did not invent.
What about this one? The US Government has sealed indictments against a number of alleged Guyanese drug traffickers. The Head of the Presidential Secretariat announced at one of his lugubrious press conferences that the names had not been made known to the Guyana Government. In any democratic country, the press would not have let that scenario go away. Readers must bear in mind that the sealed envelopes are not for politicians or civil servants or businessmen. It is logical for the people in high places to want to warn their friends. But in this case, the indictments are for drug traffickers. Yet the American Government chose not to inform the relevant administrators in Guyana. Did the press haul that one down from the skies?
Wasn’t there a stone scam? Wasn’t there a floating wharf? Remember under the PNC an electricity barge that was bought by a senior executive flopped? Could Mr. Rohee, tell us what the PPP said in those days about the barge? Does the press fictionalize the behaviour of a minister who is given to public displays of unbecoming conduct?
The PNC was in power for twenty-eight years. The PPP has chalked up sixteen. But to show you how ugly those sixteen years have been is the fact that there have been more than 28 governmental scandals since the PPP took office in 1992. When and where the next one is we don’t know. But there will be more. You bet your life on that.