The bling, bling President

Sep 06, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The French press had dubbed one of its leaders, “the bling bling President.” Nicolas Sarkozy (who lost power no doubt because the French frowned on his bling, bling image) just loved la dolce vita and never hid that fact from the French people.
Here in Guyana, a more subdued media chose to avoid such descriptions. But the mansion President Jagdeo was building did attract enormous attention. It has been photographed and is now in the media. The pictures of it have become buried in the comical background of a GINA report on the thoughts of an anonymous police officer.
Twice I reported on this page that Jonathan Mann, a television journalist working for CNN International, said that after speaking to Colonel Gaddafi, he couldn’t understand how Libyans accepted him as President.
It is the same in Guyana. We have become the most hilarious nation-state in the world for the asinine things that flow out of our government and the mouths of its leaders.
GINA is not a private or public media house. It is the information arm of the Ministry of Information, headed by the President himself.
When GINA speaks, it announces the opinions, judgements, feelings, beliefs, policies and actions of the complete public realm and the complete State system. When GINA speaks, it is the Government of Guyana that is talking.
It is utterly stupid, for the Government of Guyana to announce that a certain police officer said so and so and did this or that.
This is beyond belief and totally clownish. If there is a police officer that holds the opinion that Kaieteur News compromised the security of the former President, his/her views cannot be transported through GINA.
It is only when the officer is speaking on behalf of the police force that GINA can carry his/her position. How imbecilic that the Government of Guyana, through its Information Ministry, cannot boldly quote an identifiable police official and chose to let the person remain anonymous.
If this security officer is speaking in his/her official capacity then why would the Guyana Government not want that person, a public official, to be known. The secrecy obviously leads to the circus, meaning that the whole thing was planned in the circus, and there was really no police officer that spoke those words.
How can any modern Government be so silly? If it wanted to claim that Jagdeo’s security was breached then the commonsensical thing to do was to let the State media carry the item. So who is this senior police officer, in what capacity was he/she speaking, and why is he/she afraid to identify him/herself?
Before we return to the bling, bling president, it fascinates a person to know why Mr. Jagdeo gets so much praise from the letter pages of the Chronicle and all are fictitious names.
Surely, there must come a time when Mr. Jagdeo would wake up and say to himself, “I want real, living, actual people to say to me that I have been a great President?” Would you like me, a real, living, actual person by the name of Frederick Kissoon, to say that Sir? I can actually get a real, living Guyanese to do it.
I don’t read the Guyana Times but I was told that in its edition yesterday, it quoted voices from civil society as denouncing the Kaieteur News for the publication of the Jagdeo mansion, but again no names were published. I seriously hope that Mr. Jagdeo does not write those things himself. Back to the bling, bling President.
But wait a minute! How can anyone be so foolish to talk about security violation with the publication of that mansion when any former leader or serving leader can find his/her house on Google Earth or Google Maps? Of course, Mr. Jagdeo’s mansion was on the World Wide Web a long time ago.
Mr. Jagdeo would know about things on the web, because some nasty characters operating out of the Office of the President have been posting very dirty things on the internet a long time now. Anyway, back to the bling, bling President.
I honestly didn’t know Mr. Jagdeo had such a luxurious home, which will now be partially upkept by public funds. I hope the opposition does a hatchet job on all those perks he gave himself.
Mr. Jagdeo was not too concerned about the cost he sold the other house in Pradoville for and the mansion he built in Pradoville Two. He had no opposition during his authoritarian reign. So he did what he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted.

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The bling, bling President

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