Baby language and fascism in Guyana

Aug 10, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Let me say with hardened inflexibility that there is nothing in modern political theory that would deny the resort to dictatorship and/or fascism by a ruling party that won power through an open election. No trained political theorist would jeapordize his/her education by asserting that once a government comes to power through legal means, it cannot embrace dictatorial or fascist policies.
Human behaviour is not the simplistic thing Ravi Dev makes it out to be. Though he may not be trained in political philosophy, Mr. Dev is educated enough to know that once rulers feel nice and comfortable with power, they become oblivious to reality. But Dev obfuscates this reality in his columns because he writes as a propagandist for the PPP Government and not as an independent thinker.
In propagandizing, educated people can descend to embarrassing levels. We see that everyday with Dr. Prem Misir. On a daily basis he excoriates the private media for sensationalist and biased journalism. Yet this man sits on the board of a state-owned newspaper that lacks even a modicum of human decency muchless journalistic integrity. It is doubtful whether educated minds pay any heed to what Misir writes. I urged Dev in one of my columns last week that if he continues with his blatant, jejune viewpoints in support of the PPP, he runs the risk of earning the same reaction from the society that Vishnu Bisram and Joey Jagan receive.
No one in this country believes that Mr. Bisram is a genuine pollster. His fictional polls have now confined to him writing about them in the letter pages of the two independent dailies. After crazy rampages on channel 6 with Mr. C.N. Sharma, in which he appears extremely comical, which self-respecting political organization in Guyana will take Joey Jagan seriously?
As the election draws closer, Mr. Dev is going to go in a direction where he will be lumped with these types of personalities. One hopes that he does not insult his learned mind. Maybe he has already done so.
In a column last week, I reminded him that what he calls acidic rhetoric from anti-government critics are nothing compared to the inflammatory incitement by the President himself and other PPP leaders, and the daily miasma from the Chronicle. I gave him evidence of extremist policies, attitudes and behaviour of the PPP regime. An unrepentant, recalcitrant, unashamed Dev fired back in his last Sunday column. This time he takes a new line whose aridity one easily smashed to pieces.
Dev tells us that there is no need for extremist language from people like me, Lincoln Lewis and other anti-government critics. What the opposition needs to do is to win over hearts and minds so that they can secure the government in free elections. There is that pathway in Guyana, meaning that power can be taken from the PPP. If Dev thinks this is an ingenious way of masking the fascist descent of the PPP, he is wrong.
An opposition cannot shape its reaction to brutal policies of a deadly poisonous regime because at the end of the day, there is a free election waiting. Dev must have seen the protest in London where the convoy carrying Prince Philip and his wife was attacked. Isn’t the UK Government freely elected? Can someone show Dev clips of the Greek reaction to austerity measures? The demonstrators wanted to burn down Athens. Isn’t the Greek Government legally elected?
How an opposition shapes its protest against a government depends on the nature of the rulers. This is a separate phenomenon from elections at the end of every four years. You cannot use baby language to condemn cruel, bestial, tyrannical policies of a regime that has crossed all the lines of human decency. Mr. Dev disagrees. He wants you to check your language because you can wrest power from the bad rulers in free and fair elections. Dev refers to me and Lincoln Lewis as extremist commentators. Why isn’t Dev an extremist polemicist too? He said if Indians didn’t come to Guyana, it would have remained a mangrove. He calls for Indian balance in the security forces. Are those intemperate tones?
Finally, can the Government of Guyana be referred to as evil? Can you speak of fascist overtones in the Government of Guyana? I will not bring myself to advise Dev, but instead of permanently lamenting my use of these terms, why doesn’t he tell us why they cannot be used to describe the unspeakable things that characterize bad governance under the PPP? What adjectives best describe these unimaginable venalities?

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Baby language and fascism in Guyana

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