Defenders of elected dictatorship in Guyana become comical

Feb 06, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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The adjectives, “comical”, “laughable”, “facetious” become applicable when one reads a paid official from the Office of the President writing this line in Thursday’s letter pages of the Kaieteur News; “ These pen pushers peddle a false battle cry, painting Guyana as an elected dictator and indeed the ad nauseam allegations of corruption, money laundering and narcotics connection.”
This is coming from the pen of no other than Dr. Prem Misir, known propagandist, Chronicle columnist and lecturer to Kaieteur News and the Stabroek News on press conduct.
Does this appalling aridity and unproductive propaganda need a reply?  No one takes these sycophantic notes of the paid propagandists of the Office of the President seriously. This explains why Misir and Randy Persaud hustle their way quickly to the front doors of the Kaieteur News and the Stabroek News to get their views across.
They know that their wonderful government, democratic and admirable as it is, cannot get Guyanese across the nation and in the Diaspora to read the government’s equally wonderful press mouthpiece, the Chronicle.
I bet most definitely, that Messrs. Misir and Persaud send their missives first to the two independent dailies before they post it to the Chronicle. This doesn’t say much for the effective work these two OP propagandists are doing. It is time Mr. Jagdeo ask them when they will get the Chronicle to outstrip the two independent dailies.
Let’s return to the question of why ramblings, utterly nonsensical as what we quoted above from Misir, need to be rebutted. If you don’t, then people like Misir end up telling their own psychology that they have won, that their propaganda has outstripped the assessments of others who have analysed the existence of elected dictatorship in Guyana. One of the problems a commentator has in rejecting the jejune presentations of people like Misir is in the phantasmagoria of puerilities you do not know where to start because in the tunnel of confusion is so long. So where to start in the debate with Misir – corruption, money laundering, narcotics, dictatorial governance, racial discrimination in the public sector?
Misir tells readers that there is the repeat by governmental critics, ad nauseam of corruption in official circles. Is he referring to the reports of the Auditor-General over the past two years, or the annual findings of Transparency International, or the Pulitzer-prize type journalism of this newspaper last year that in any other nation would have led to police investigations against high-level politicians?
Or does Misir have in mind the entire population of this territory who, when you speak to them about the PPP Government, the first words that come out of their mouth is “this government is corrupt”?
Shall we move on to Misir’s favourite rampart – there is no African marginalization? I guess we can skip that because his latest servile defence of elected dictatorship did not make mention of that social pathology.
How about if we stick to another aspect of corruption before we move on to Captain David Clark? Dr. Misir should address the issue of corruption because his close colleague in the Office of the President is being accused by many important stakeholders of moral corruption.
Dr. Misir works closely with Kwame Mc Coy as Mc Coy is the junior presidential press liaison and Dr. Misir is the senior. How does Misir feel about the abrogation of Mc Coy’s American visa?
Oh, I forgot! That is an allegation against Mc Coy repeated ad nauseam by critics of elected dictatorship.
Shall we discuss David Clark, the army officer who was given permission to stay in the US after he told officials from the Justice Department about the cocaine connection between high governmental officials and Mr. Roger Khan? Or is that an insinuation against the government repeated ad naseam by its critics?
Perhaps Dr. Misir may want to explain why four witnesses on US soil have implicated Dr. Leslie Ramsammy in a conspiracy with a convicted drug baron, Mr. Roger Khan.
Finally, what is elected dictatorship? Delineated by the American scholar, Fareed Zakaria (his thesis will be explained in a forthcoming column), the concept is now an accept one in political theory.
It simply means free elections and constitutional freedoms are not dialectically connected in that a legally elected government can devastate constitutional freedoms. Interestingly, Zakaria classifies Antigua as party free. What then would he think of Guyana?  In closing, one hopes we see a lecture from Dr. Misir on what is gutter journalism and which newspapers in Guyana he thinks that term is applicable to.

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