More evidence of fascism in Guyana

Apr 15, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

With each passing day, the tentacles of elected dictatorship spread over this land, making the regime of Forbes Burnham look very innocent. Today when you see the hair-raising nastiness of the PPP Government, then you know it is understandable when those who lived under Burnham say that his rule was not authoritarian.
Lincoln Lewis, TUC General Secretary said on benschopradio.com a few months back that the Burnham Government was not a dictatorship, that when you talk of dictatorship you have to look at the PPP Government today. This is what I mean by understandable.
I would not agree with Mr. Lewis, but the logic behind his thinking needs to be explored. Mr. Lewis may have seen more evidence as recent as yesterday to further compel him to exonerate Mr. Burnham from claims of autocracy and direct the charge of dictatorship against the administration of the PPP.
On April 8, the office of Assistant Commissioner of Police Vyphuis received an application from Mr. Lewis for the TUC to have a political meeting on East Street, facing the Merriman Mall, at 17 hours on Wednesday, April 13.
All advertisements were drafted and ready to go to the media houses since four days ago. But at 15.00 hours on the date of the meeting (Wednesday) permission was still to be obtained from the police. Commissioner Greene said he needed time to study the application since he only got it three hours before the beginning of the event.
Frantic calls to Minister Rohee and Commissioner Greene led to permission being given just two hours before the start. And the permit had the words; “With reference to your application of April 8…” Naturally there couldn’t have been any advertisements in the media. Naturally the turnout had to be less than what was expected.
Is this an indication of what is to come now that we are in an election campaign? Did Mr. Burnham show the same attitude to the PPP when the PPP was in opposition? The answer is no. The WPA had a few setbacks but the PPP got its permission long before the start of their rallies. I know this because I lived through the Burnham era. I saw Clement Rohee and his PPP colleagues, including Cheddi Jagan, address their supporters at these meetings. Now the shoe is on the other foot. It is Mr. Rohee’s turn to decide the type of freedoms the opposition is allowed to enjoy.
This attempt to derail the TUC political meeting occurred after Mr. Jagdeo went to Berbice and sang songs of praise to his government and told his audience how terrible the PNC was when it was in power. He told his listeners it was a bad thing to have Adam Harris as editor of the Kaieteur News because Harris was once the editor of the PNC newspaper, New Nation.
But the very PNC when it was in power never denied the PPP the right to hold political rallies.
Yesterday, I called on President Jagdeo to tell the people of Berbice all the truths about his government after he addressed his party supporters at the conference to endorse Donald Ramotar as the PPP’s election point man for the 2011 general poll.
Mr. Jagdeo spoke on two basic themes – corruption and development. He accused the Kaieteur News of inventing stories of corruption and when the government replied the explanations are not carried.
If one were to jump from another planet into Guyana and listen to Mr. Jagdeo, that person would believe that Mr. Jagdeo is the perfect saint. Under the Minister of Information, who is Mr. Jagdeo himself, the state-owned media houses, NCN television, NCN radio and the Guyana Chronicle, have never been as controlled under the PNC Government and have never been reduced to such gutter entities as they are under Mr. Jagdeo’s control.
If any person in Guyana should not talk about bias in the media it is Mr. Jagdeo. No future government in this land, even under a new PPP cabal could ever reach the depths of journalistic depravity as what currently obtains in these three state-owned media entities.
In his presentation to his Berbice supporters, Mr. Jagdeo accused the private media of inventing stories of corruption and spoke of the need to have the PPP back in power to continue developments in Guyana. But what are the truths that lie in these stories on fictional corruption in the media and sparkling developments?
In a forthcoming column we will tell Berbicians of more truths, some of which may induce heart failure.

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