The one way to ascertain the writer’s intent is to focus on the impact of the things he says he’s not.
It’s the use of a figure of speech technique- Litotes– to assert something by denying its contrary.
So, in what has degenerated to open season assault on the democratic right voters have exercised to elect their leader, we have yet another side show in the form of an open letter coming from Joe Singh, who begins his open address with‘‘Respectfully”…..then says he “holds no brief”… but then appends “for no particular party”…
And that’s where I’ll start with this thing…especially since the next line says “I record these things not to beat my own drum but to emphasize that there are certain principles...”
…then the old “ Constitution and will of the people” line that hints at patriotism, as he beats his OWN drum.
The record, his record, will reflect that this man of principle, Joe Singh, was Chairman of GECOM for the 2001 elections.
It may be of no coincidence that it was the year the 1997 elections, in which Janet declared herself President, was ruled null and void by then Justice Claudette Singh- who deemed that lawmakers, who had approved the voting rules, had acted beyond their authority, with the evidence of missing ballot boxes from PNC strongholds to complete her finding.
But, it is of import that it was the year that Bharrat, illegally sworn in by illegal Janet, was busted for nullifying 30,000 votes and claiming a victory by securing 45000 votes from the PNC stronghold in Charlestown.
Neither principle nor “will of the people” was cited by Joe Singh then in any open letter and he moved on, under the same illegal Bharrat Jagdeo Administration, to run the Conservation International Agency from 2001 -2005 and was the principled patriot there when the McKinsey report, paid for by the Jagdeo Administration, came under scrutiny for overstating and inflating the accomplishments of the Agency headed by the principled Joe Singh .
Singh then went on to head Guyana Telephone and Telegraph from 2005 to 2010.
The two major things remembered during his principled tenure are the Global Marine cable talks and agreement signing with Suriname and the “landing of 700-miles of submarine fiber-optic cable off the Atlantic Coast.”
After a USD 60 million (conservative… no time to go thru the Ashni Singh manufactured statements signed off by his wife the Auditor General in a brazen conflict of interest) investment into a fiber optic venture that robbed the tax payer in signature Jagdeo fashion, Joe Singh left GT and T in July of 2010…with his self-ascribed principles intact.
Next stop for Joe Singh was the Board of Geology and Mines Commission where he took over from an ‘honest’ predecessor Norman McClean and on whose Multi Stake Holder Steering Committee was well known business man, Gerry Gouveia, also of ‘honest’ repute.
Principles, you see, come in a variety of flavors.
And for all of Joe’s morality and patriotism, that too ended badly, like all of his previous high-salaried assignments, awarded after consecutive failures.
Remarkably, Joe Singh never once penned an open letter to Bharrat, who had become international persona non grata for the Thugocracy he had reduced Guyana to, for gains that never reached all the people.
By then the Government was ignoring extrajudicial assassinations coming out of its Ministry of Home Affairs; had become a bastion of lawlessness forced in to remedial compliance by international bodies.
Joe Singh stayed and never used his pen…even as the country became labelled Cocaine Highway during his son’s tenure as head of Guyana’s Customs Anti Narcotic Unit that he qualified for, they say, merely by being the seed of the principled Joe Singh.
Guyana is now at the place where factions invoke words like ‘democracy’ and ‘principled’ to provide transparent cover for hypocrisy and to run interference for the Party they would align with by ethnicity, or its propensity to offer cover for activities that run along the lines of nepotism and good old curry favor.
So, we’ll hear a patois of self righteousness and service to country, even as the opportunity to serve came out of “the old boys” network and the service outcomes were not quantifiable or measurably beneficial to the nation.
All else has failed since 2015 so, now, the focus is on the soft-porn version of a smear campaign, feigning fear that the Constitution that Joe Singh was around for when it was amended to threads to benefit the PPP
– even the rape of its pre-amble to insert Amerindian, as it relegates the other 5 races –
will be destroyed by the Coalition Government that, ironically, remains the victim of the Constitution that was shredded for the benefit of the Party and Government Joe Singh now defends- only in the capacity of pious patriot and not provocative partisan.
Put it out there seems to be the strategy…say whatever, once we saying something.
So, Orwell was right.
If thought could corrupt language, language could corrupt thought.
I’ll submit very ‘respectfully’ that this is Joe Singh’s intent.
