The failure of the propaganda machine of elected dictatorship in Guyana

Mar 04, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The creators and creatures of the present dictatorship in Guyana have failed to convince people in and out of this country that they have done better than the previous PNC Government under Forbes Burnham.
The propagandists of the elected dictatorship stay clear from any criticism of the Hoyte presidency. They avoid criticism of the Hoyte period like the plague because it would embarrass them. Under President Hoyte, democratic restoration began to take shape.
Today, no decent mind in this land and in the Diaspora can seriously debate politics and avoid the conclusion that the PPP Government, particularly after 2001, has exceeded the egregious excesses, authoritarian nastiness, illegal conspiracies and moral turpitude of the PNC under President Burnham.
Some academics may want to go in a certain direction and say that whereas the Burnham era was a dictatorship, the shape of things today manifests elements of fascism. This writer holds to that view.
The misery compounding the performance failure is the complete lack of success on the propaganda front. Randy Persaud has gone silent. Persaud is afraid to open his mouth because it is known in Georgetown that he packed and left in a hurry, leaving the little dictators to find replacements.
Those substitutes are as incompetent as Persaud. Leading the cast is Prem Misir. I met Misir on Monday evening at a UG Council meeting and asked him how someone like Kwame McCoy can be his boss. He told me McCoy wasn’t his superior. I am not sure what to believe.
Misir, like Randy Persaud, knows that unless the Jagdeo propaganda team can find space in the Kaieteur News and the Stabroek News, then it is pushing a stone uphill (a Sisyphean task). But even when given coverage, the propaganda machine cannot get off the ground.
The sad thing about the Jagdeo regime was that it was not able to get anything right. Mr. Jagdeo is about to ride off and when he does he will look back and see that GuySuCo is in a coffin. Propaganda in the 21st century is about sophistication and articulation. It is about how you package your product.
By how you package the product I am referring to choice of words. Here is a graphic example of incompetent propaganda. A Sunday columnist of this newspaper, who is in support of President Jagdeo, titled his commentary; “El Dorado may be in sight at last.” That is a self-defeating use of words. It immediately generates anger because El Dorado brings into play a picture of vast economic development, high incomes and modern living.
Even the PPP supporters who live abroad know that Guyana has a long, long way to go to catch up with Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad. Even by Third World standards, Guyana is extremely poor. A better semantic display could have been, “Progress may be finally coming to Guyana.”
Here is where propaganda fails, because it is wrapped up in the wrong paper. This is an approach that Misir is yet to understand. His constant theme is that if Guyana is not a democracy then how come the Kaieteur News is free to print and Freddie Kissoon is free to write what he wants etc.
I have seen him repeat those and countless examples ad nauseam. Whenever Misir writes there is the usual juxtaposition – the PNC Government was a dictatorship, the PPP Government has brought democracy.
This is one of the most childish ways of debating and has cost Misir his credibility. One wonders if his colleague in the press section of Office of the President, Kwame McCoy, wouldn’t do a better job.
If the PNC Government was a dictatorship then how come the opposition PPP lasted in physical existence, even without being in jail, for 28 years until it came to power in 1992?
How come the Mirror newspaper was never banned? How come the PPP organ, the Thunder, was never done away with? How come the school of Cheddi protégés who shot and killed a police guard at the Corentyne were never tried for treason? How come these same underlings who constantly committed arson at GuySuCo estates were never charged for treason? How come Freedom House was never hit with even a stink egg between 1964 and 1992?
And Mama Janet was never ever touched (maybe Forbes had a soft spot for her). How come Misir, a PPP member, got a job at UG in 1980? Maybe, like Janet, Burnham had a soft spot for him? Try being a more competent propagandist, Misir. Ask Kwame for some tips.

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The failure of the propaganda machine of elected dictatorship in Guyana

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