So much to pack in here but maybe, we could start with Madam Lynch’s election interference and her taunting message, ‘democracy is noisy’.
We can add the previous President’s unilateral- some say double-crossing and cowardly – ceding of an election, mid contestation to an Opposition comprised of characters that America and its cohorts had already deemed gangster.
Stir in racial animus, political tribalism with a dedication to decimating Afro Guyanese, the weaponizing of the military, paramilitary and the rule of law and in just about 30 days, Guyana has become an ascendant fascist regime, already sitting up there with countries that gave meaning to the term.
It’s Government by Grievance but let’s not forget that it comes with an entertainment component …like the Face Book Off Track Betting (OTB) that teases “who should be the next GECOM Staff to be arrested with election fraud”…
responded to with an abundance of submissions of Afro political targets in contravention to both national motto, and rule of law with such lewd glee and unzipped rancor that it is fittingly received as their collective minds in an act of indecent exposure.
Not sure, though, that the fast paced race to fascism is not discomfiting the Madam and her cohorts in the international community…not when their election interference was based upon ensuring the preservation of ‘Democracy and Human Rights of Guyanese’ which her government of choice is expediently dismantling at break –neck pace.
The designated malcontents have now become the victims of the current government’s persecution as political enemies of State, in a hunt they are pursuing with the surgical precision of political despots.
How is the International community ever going to explain its hoisting into Administration of a group of State Department–defined Gangsters, ACTIVELY violating the 2009 UN Guidance Note on Democracy which the International Community claims to champion !
There’s a moral backwash here that cannot be addressed with a straight face…this diplomatic indecency flaunting as righteousness for Democracy and Human Rights.
Like the wife beater, the diplomats at the center of the election interference get to remain in the home – LIVE IN GUYANA UNDER DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY- because they are the breadwinners who get to dictate an alternate definition of what is proper.
And in this iteration of propriety, the Madam Lynch, with her ‘plenipotentiary’ mandate, get to appropriate the West’s own sacred ingredients of Democracy and Human Rights in a mangled theory of relativity which computes as :
‘America and the West is, relative to pre- election interference, on the back step of Venezuela’s Maduro and his oil’.
So, they remain in Guyana and consent by their silence to violations of Human Rights and Democracy, as the Republic disintegrates, degenerates into a police State where leaders elected to serve the interests of the people are now rulers who manipulate the people to serve the interests of the rulers.
To say that the West has favorably sanctioned a Mafia State in Guyana would be redundant….considering the dossiers of their own State Department that detailed Jagdeo as the ‘Scourge of the Region’ and the international ban on Irfan Ali whose 19 indictments made him unwelcome on their shores …before he became a useful idiot to upend Maduro.
To dispute that the Police and the laws of Guyana have been weaponized against residents is to deny that every day since this Government has been allowed to masquerade as one in the political community, their Afro Guyanese political opponents have been plucked off of the streets and whisked away for interrogation…without the legal right of having their attorney present or family know where they are being detained .
Not going to specifically address the thought processes of some who see this as a boon for Guyana, the ones who support the rounding up of political enemies and the denial of employment of qualified individuals because of political affiliation.
But we’ll share that the foot soldiers of this gangster government – the ones to whom we cannot ascribe astute, even gratuitously – keep sharing the secrets with some artful clumsiness that we should all be grateful for.
In one exchange, where the question was why Dr. Vincent Adams was removed from the Environmental Protection Agency, the honest but simpleton’s response was “just so you know he claimed to be a very instrumental author of the Cummingsburg Accord on a channel 9 TV program”.
And that is the encrustation of what Democracy and Human rights have decayed to in Guyana, whose ceding of an election to interference of politics has become a mocking by-word in the region.
Dr. Keith Rowley’s warning to his opponent of not ‘GUYANISING’ Trinidad’s politics was received with the loss of respect and humiliation every patriotic Guyanese should feel for a country once dubbed by the international community as the bread basket of the region….notably not and never under a government by the PPP.
AND the fact that our Republic
-getting there only after the tireless fight for Independence by the founding fathers of the nation’s politics, Jagan and Burnham-
is now preceded by ‘Banana’ , should shame us all into acknowledging how we failed to maintain our system of Government intended to be by and for the people, by consistently evaluating and holding publicly accountable those who ascended to office on our behalf and failed, in an epic lack of due diligence, that gave us Intervention by Invitation.
That the treasonous few are low –rent racists is not at dispute here especially since the traceable trail of these traitors are recorded in history as them being the victims of diplomatic sodomy, ultimately and with certainty.
What is of concern is that it happened in a monumental failure of agency to the people who entrusted their political lives to those who failed them and did so spectacularly by not employing efficient and effective Political Reconnaissance or Counter Reconnaissance in a blunder most foul.
So the fix would be to have an Opposition that is not only functional as a representative arm of government but as strategic political entities equipped with ideologies that are definitive, principles that are unequivocal and a commitment to being available to the constituents who sent them in to office…by phone, by visit, by fax, by desire.
Humility, too, is a dish best served cold…
And for those languishing in the decades of membership in, let’s say, the PNCR, we’d say this.
Membership, though vital, is not interchangeable with service or success, so that the formula being bandied about to reward service by gratuitous appointment to office is leadership malpractice, PERIOD.
We appreciate the reverence shown to founders and reflections on blue prints of the past.
But, those methods would only serve their intended purpose if they are given the 21st century make over that the founders and their able draftsmen intended as perpetual practice to sustain relevance and efficient operation through the course of time to benefit the people….NOT THE PARTY.
Which means that there should be no control by a single person, in deference to some Constitution that has clearly lost its service role to Party members; as it is brandished to assert power by the current leader whose popularity is boiling at a high zero.
Nor should there be any contemplation to retire the leader in perceived dignified fashion, in a show of symbolism that is insulting to those who feel the reward for abandonment and desertion is not a parade to cite some lost honor.
When a leader no longer has followers he is no longer a leader and the privilege of having served must prevail over pomp and pride.
That said, efforts of the political Opposition have forced the planted Government to release its political prisoners– albeit on bail that mocks the lawfulness of its judicial system.
But the task ahead is looming and requires the kind of action that should not not continue to reach back to the same practices that have proven to be time worn and obsolete, outmoded and out matched.
A system overhaul, rather than a system adjustment, is dire and would demand a major personnel reorganizing, as occurs when progress takes the place of custom.
Supply side Democracy is missing, Coalition and this should become the grammar of Opposition politics.
Re-decorating the Judiciary, Military, Para military and all the strong man agencies in the country with people of a specific ilk and politics is a dedicated stomp away from the principles of the Republic founded on Democracy.
This should not be spared publicity but equally as important and mostly even more so, should be the agenda of an Opposition that will, as it preserves the principles of society, work towards showing what our GDP should be accomplishing, what our social indicators look like (eg. incarcerations by demographic) ,the nation’s perception on the world stage.
Reach out to Constituents who are lured by food hampers and material gifts by those who feel they are cheap targets of the circumstances that they, the PPP, has embedded in socio economic systems. Your message to this demographic is critical.
Public Confidence in the government remains a cloistered statistic – concentrated in race and Partisan politics…that hovers around 40%.
That means, Opposition, that you have loads of room to be an effective political entity if you do not remain a self-sufficient, self-serving group of politicians but reach out for the assistance that will help to move you forward.
