THE ECHO OF TRUTH

Mar 02, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Someone unknown once said, “If you tell a lie big enough, repeat it often enough and embellish it each time you repeat it, your lie will take on the allure of an established fact, if not the echo of truth.”
A slightly altered version of the above quotation has been attributed to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief. But even Goebbels could learn a thing or two about propaganda from the PNC regime.
Today the PNCR is still weaving its art of propaganda that was so well mastered when the PNC was in power. And one of the main ploys used is to repeat an untruth long and often enough that eventually some believe end up believing it and getting very emotional too.
What has happened to Clement Rohee, the present Minister of Home Affairs also happened to another Minister of Home Affairs, Ronald Gajraj. They were both the victims of Goebbels- styled propaganda by the opposition.
In the case of the former Minister of Home Affairs, the lie was spread that he was the director of a death squad. The basis of this lie was the concoction of a man who claimed that he was once an informer for the death squad and who once saw a man being killed by this squad while he was grazing his cows at four o clock in the morning.
Anyone who has lived in Guyana knows that no matter what month of the year it is, it is always pitch dark at that hour of the morning. Anyone who knows a thing or two about the grazing of cattle will know that not even in the Rupununi Savannahs are cattle grazed at 4. a.m.
But here was a master storyteller, a “ gaff man as we would say, a man who one senior police official admitted was known to the police, spinning a story implicating a minister of the government simply because he felt that the death of his brother was not promptly investigated.
He went public with the allegation that on a night when four men were slaughtered in Robb Street, he was at the home of the minister when a call came through to the effect that the targets were identified to which the minister gave certain orders.
This tall tale ignited a political storm in Guyana and the government was forced to establish a commission of inquiry to probe whether this minister had any ties to death squads.
The commission of inquiry exonerated the minister. It found that the man who was grazing his cows at 4 a.m. was a discredited witness. The phone records were checked and no such call was received.
Despite the unambiguous verdict of this independent commission of inquiry, the lie continued to be pedaled that there was a link to death squads. This lie has been repeated so consistently and in so many variations, that it has assumed the “allure of fact” and “the echo of truth.”
People have been brainwashed into believing that story and despite the fact that there was a commission of inquiry that found no such links, the truth is often repeated and embellished.
It therefore does not matter what the Commission of Inquiry into the events of July 18 last in Linden have pronounced.
Those who have used this incident to deflect from their own involvement will continue to peddle the lie that orders came from political circles for the action that led to the deaths of the three men.
Just like with the case of the former Minister of Home Affairs, the political opposition has in this instance boxed itself into a corner.
It resorted to a legislative lynching of the present Minister of Home Affairs, going so far as moving a motion of no- confidence in him and then attempting to silence him for an offence for which it has not produced a shred of credible evidence.
The opposition stands today like the naked emperor believing that it has not just an invisible cloak but also an invincible right to hang the minister out to dry.
It tried him even before the commission of inquiry had been completed. It prejudged the commission of inquiry and used him as a scapegoat to save the political careers of some of their own.
It has now found itself disgraced but not without an exit strategy.
That exit strategy would be to do like what some did with the former minister of Home Affairs: continue to repeat the unproven facts and hope that by constantly repeating and embellishing them, that somehow the unproven allegations will assume “ the allure of facts” and the echo of truth.”
After what the Linden Commission of Inquiry has revealed, it is time for the government to move a motion of no-confidence in the entire opposition. They should all resign.

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THE ECHO OF TRUTH

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