That this Administration continues to allow the media of the Opposition to control the narrative remains an enigma.
Typically, there are designees responsible for crafting the word for public consumption and there are those who are responsible for ensuring that the events are reported to the letter; without any editorializing, without any opining.
Each Minister has an assigned media person, as does the President and the Prime Minister.
One of the key parts of their training is how to respond to damaging material. This, typically, means that they are taught certain basic facts about travelling protocol, so, if spurious, deleterious, mendacious reports make it out of the news stables, then they are prepared to counter attack and reeducate those who would have been poisoned by the calumny.
As citizens of a country, it is one’s responsibility to have, at least, a perfunctory understanding of how things operate, especially if the operation depends on one’s tax dollars. As one grows older, having more detailed knowledge should be the natural progression and when there is obloquy, vituperation and straight, hardcore, undeniable lies, then it is the duty of every citizen to step up and set the record straight; primarily because using a news medium to fabricate and deliberately misinform is tantamount to mass miseducation.
Having said all of the above, these are the facts.
When heads of state travel to the United States of America, the US State Department is required to provide a security detail. Only if the head of state indicates he does not want security, then none will be provided. And, when that happens, that head of state is mandated to sign a waiver stating his refusal of assigned US security detail.
This assignment of security is strictly, wholly and solely at the expense of the US tax payer and not the tax payer of the country of the head of state. Common sense would dictate that this is the only way the US could stand behind the safe guarantee that they offer the visiting dignitary.
So, the reports from news organs, which are undeniably against the current government, claiming that the cost of Prime Minister Nagamooto’s security detail will have to be footed by the Guyana tax payer is not only incendiary but it is deliberately misleading and intended to inflame.
That these news organs have chosen to use the greater portion of their reporting to cover dissenting opinions, while barely covering the fact that thousands of Guyanese showed up to help he Prime Minister launch the country’s Jubilee celebrations, comes as no surprise to members of the Diaspora who are tired of the politics of race and are committed to leadership that is more patriotic than partisan.
What continues to befuddle us, though, is the consistent, repeated, absence of a timely, corrective response from the Public Relations teams in the Administration; particularly the one assigned to the Prime Minister Nagamootoo – even as the propaganda machine continues to influence the opinions of those who are heading to the polls in March for Local Government Elections, over and over and over.
And the next day, they are allowed to return to their jobs.
Well said There is the need for more robust PR by the Govt