Propaganda or sincere beliefs though not grounded in reality?

Nov 23, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I was watching a Harrison Ford movie on illegal migration into the US the other night and after I pulled out the disc from the DVD player, I saw on television, President Bharrat Jagdeo addressing the guests at the lightening up ceremony of the Christmas tree at Houston.
I was glad I saw it because his delivery wasn’t featured in the private print media (I do not read the Chronicle and honestly don’t know the last day I set eyes on a copy of the Guyana Times; really a waste of a very good newspaper press)
I heard Mr. Jagdeo describe Guyana as the only country that saw high growth last year in both the Caribbean and South American regions. That is not true.
That is egregiously incorrect. Quite a number of economies in Latin America experienced high growth rates in 2009 with Brazil way at the top.
We need to remind readers of these ambitious, emotionally charged emanations from Mr. Jagdeo that do his credibility no good.
On his campaign to sell his low carbon thing, he yelled out that Guyana has one of the most democratic constitutions in the world in terms of its latitude to consult with the population.
This was a mockery of the reality in Guyana. A constitution could guarantee citizens a prodigious amount of rights not ever seen before but they may never be practised by the Government. If one reads the Cuban constitution, it allows more freedoms than any other such document in other countries in the world.
Yet Cubans are not allowed to even pass on the streets on Havana where the Western embassies are located. What a caricature of a constitution! Secondly, it is palpably untrue to say that the Jagdeo presidency consults the people of Guyana. The Government of Guyana remains one of the most secretive regimes on Planet Earth.
Then Mr. Jagdeo again yelled out that Guyana is way ahead of the rest of states in this hemisphere where rights of citizens are assured. This is obnoxiously misleading. The substantial institutions through which rights are guaranteed in modern politics are absent in Guyana. We can briefly cite the non-existence of the state-commission human rights authority.
Mr. Jagdeo has six months left and he has no intention of facilitating this body. It will be left to another president to set up the office of the Ombudsman.
Mr. Jagdeo does not stop. He went up to Berbice (and in the presence of President Bouterse of Suriname publicly attacked me; topic of a future column) and told UG students that at the university that he expect value for taxpayers money.
This statement comes days after the Auditor-General report points to recurring financial irregularities in the Government of Guyana over which Mr. Jagdeo presides in which hundreds of millions of dollars cannot be accounted for.
Why Mr. Jagdeo says these things is easy to understand. He has to say something when he meets with an audience. But is it possible that through his psychological prisms he sees phenomena that do not exist but they exist for him? This has to carry a different interpretation because it means that Mr. Jagdeo is not being willfully deceptive and propagandistically dishonest.
At the Christmas tree event he told his listeners there is progress all over Guyana.
Mr. Jagdeo probably has in his mind the countless constructions going on at a supersonic pace all over Guyana. But any first year economics student will tell you that is not how progress is assessed or ever will be measured.
In Guyana, “nuff” constructions are being done by the proceeds of money laundering.
This means that there cannot be a transfer into the real economy because the money is not genuine investments thus is cannot generate real profits. Secondly, income earning is a strong barometer to evaluate progress. One egregious example can suffice here – a clerk at UWI earns more than a qualified lecturer at UG. Public servants’ pay is horribly low.
In 2009, in the May Day rally at the corner of Regent and Cummings Streets, Red Thread activists were distributing little pamphlets. I have one in front of me here.
This is what it says; “Increase public assistance from the disgraceful sum of $158 a day! That can’t buy three quarters of a loaf of bread.”
Is this the progress Mr. Jagdeo is talking about? Or does he mean the billion dollar projects that certain friends are engaged in and the mansions going up in Pradoville 2.
There is progress in Guyana if you look at it through the lenses of Mr. Jagdeo.

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Propaganda or sincere beliefs though not grounded in reality?

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