Blame the Government - When people act on false information

Blame the Government – When people act on false information

Jun 22, 2008 Features / Columnists

The Head of State is having a difficult time trying to change some people but like his predecessors he is going to keep trying. This past week he was in New York and he attracted a picketing demonstration involving people who have not been in Guyana for years and who helped contribute to whatever decline there is.

These are people who have been hearing all the negative things about Guyana from their relatives here largely because those relatives know that if they tell those overseas the worst things about the country they would get money and other goods.

President Bharrat Jagdeo had gone to the United States to continue what is to become a tradition of Caricom leaders meeting with the various leaders in the United States and as usual these Caricom leaders also take the time to meet with their people who adopted temporary homes overseas as part of the continuing migratory habit. President Jagdeo was no different.

The comment by Robert Corbin that President Jagdeo ran from the jumbie and met with the coffin is indeed reflective of the programme of blaming the government that the main opposition party is conducting. All over the world prices are rising, but to hear Corbin and the other opposition people would believe that this phenomenon is unique to Guyana and so people have to demonstrate against it.

Imagine people in America protesting against the value added tax. They pay a high tax and on just about everything they consume; they pay the kinds of rent that if Guyanese had to pay such prices they would almost all be living on the streets. Yet they protest against VAT.

Then they protested against governance. While living in Guyana might not have been a bed of roses surely the fact that the people can actually meet and talk with their leaders is a far cry from what they can do in the United States. Many of them have never seen the President of the United States much more talk to him. Some of them have not even seen the Congressmen or any of their senators to discuss their woes.

They have lost jobs or have been forced to do two and even more jobs and they are the ones who picketed President Jagdeo about good governance. It had to be that they were mimicking the opposition in Guyana without really understanding what they were being asked to do.

What was perhaps the worst thing to happen was to accuse the government of racist policies in Guyana. There is ethnic insecurity because people have convinced themselves that people of different ethnic origins would discriminate against them. The truth is something else and many can testify but those in the United States never gave this a thought. The PNCR said to protest and that is what they did.

Guyanese who live overseas are often unaware of what is actually happening in the land of their birth because they do not take time to avail themselves of the news. Instead they rely on third hand information which they gobble. The more depressing the news the more these overseas Guyanese tend to believe the news. They are ready candidates for the blame game.

They are unaware that in Guyana people pay less for food because of a deliberate plan to ensure that this country never experiences a food shortage. There is Carifesta and come August the world will be descending on Guyana.

Mr. Corbin in what can only be described as double speak, says that he supports Carifesta. Then he says that he does not think that Guyana should host Carifesta, and that the money spent hosting the event should go toward helping to solve some of the ills in Guyana.

Mr. Corbin surely does not appreciate that the investment in Carifesta is just that and that the country would earn more than the money it spends; that ordinary people will be in a position to earn money from skills they have but which they cannot readily market in Guyana.

The country will become a major advertising board and so be in a position to earn even more money in the future because there are bound to be return visits after Carifesta is gone.

But the investment in Carifesta has become a source of blame for the government.
President Jagdeo dealt with these issues in the United States and when it was over people began to get a better understanding of what was going on, but there were still those who were trapped in the time warp of blaming the government.

And they are talking about crime in Guyana without considering that Guyana hosted Cricket World Cup; a Commonwealth Finance Ministers Summit and the Rio Summit. There were no violent incidents and this is not about to change now.

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