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The vibes are flowing in opposite directions
If you have followed my articles in KN over the past decade, you would know that I died many times after picking up the newspapers and reading some of the most ridiculous things to come out of the mouths of certain Guyanese. Sunday, I died again. I read the Rickey Singh column and thought that I was seeing a ghost.
Interestingly, Singh informed us two weeks before the elections that he couldn’t come to Guyana because he was ill.
I have good friends in Barbados (apart from my sibling, nieces and nephews) who told me that they don’t doubt that Singh was incapacitated but whatever afflicted him, it didn’t immobilize him, because he was seen in Bridgetown quite often at a time when the election virus was hitting Guyana. I doubt that if Singh was in good health, he would have journeyed to Georgetown.
After nineteen years as a PPP, then Jagdeo propagandist, Mr. Singh knew he would have been snubbed by sections of the private media, though he would have been feted by his darling newspaper, the Chronicle.
Singh was not in a propagandistic frame of mind. The mood was somber. Singh, in an incredible recognition of the integrity of Guyanese elder statesman, Eusi Kwayana, informed us that Kwayana has advised Guyana that after the November 28 results, there is a great opportunity for a unity government. Not satisfied with quoting Kwayana, Singh went on to make some observations that he was incapable of uttering since 1992.
Referring to Kwayana’s call for a national unity government, Singh lamented that such an advocacy has always been expeditiously avoided. This is not all. Singh now throws away his previous propaganda banalities and stressed that “there is need for matured, sober political responses to the problems and challenges facing Guyana.”
Singh also hopes for “genuine efforts by the power-brokers to advance progress towards national unity.” First it was Clinton Urling, German’s Restaurant owner, then Ron Sanders, now it is the man from the Chronicle the past 19 years, Rickey Singh.
Just in case you don’t know, Singh and his journalist colleague, Hubert Williams, ran from the rule of Forbes Burnham in the seventies and sought residency in Barbados and were given it.
Since 1992, Singh has occupied space in the Sunday Chronicle and has been a staunch supporter of PPP Government. For Singh and Williams, Burnham was the worst leader Guyana produced. Both have never lived in Guyana under the PPP regime and during the twelve years of Bharrat Jagdeo’s reign. It is simply an exercise in nonsense to compare Burnham and Jagdeo. The latter makes the former looks like a child in a candy store.
So Rickey Singh is hoping for national unity.
Looked at from any angle, it means that we don’t have it. Singh never told us that we didn’t have it. Reading him the past nineteen years in the Chronicle, you would have thought Mr. Jagdeo achieved that goal a long time ago.
Reading Singh the past 19 years, you would not have known that there are problems and challenges facing Guyana. We are left to wonder why, during the past nineteen years, Singh never yearned for national unity in his columns but only discovered it exists in his mind after November 28, 2011. Likewise, Ron Sanders wrote after November 28 that the ruling PPP had used the state media to deny the opposition a voice.
There are reverse flows at the moment. While Urling, Sanders and Singh are moving in one direction, Ian McDonald goes another way. Before the international observers could pronounce on the elections, McDonald told Stabroek News readers that the opposition should accept the integrity of the 2011 elections. There is no comment from him why GECOM would agree to two PPP requests for recount when the results were not yet known. Mc Donald avoids any mention of the OAS observer team’s statement that they saw unauthorized persons entering GECOM with Statements of Poll.
This is a new Mc Donald. Throughout his media career, he has only commented on one issue outside of literature and poetry. That was when President Jagdeo pulled state ads from the Stabroek News. Mc Donald is full into political commentary now. First, he tells us Cheddi Jagan was a genius. Now he pontificates on the “clean and fair” 2001 national elections. What next, Sir?
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