Self-inflicted international isolation

Jul 25, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The APNU+AFC Coalition Government has a public relations challenge. It has no public relations. The Department of Public Information (DPI) and that squeaky outfit, which works out of the Office of the President and is stacked by non-PR specialists, are doing more injury to the administration’s image than it is doing good.
The National Communications Network (NCN) and the Guyana Chronicle are state-owned agencies, which have become so imbalanced in their reporting that it is hard to distinguish their pre-2015 performance with that of the post-2015 performance. Both have become disgraceful mouthpieces of the ruling coalition.
NCN and the Guyana Chronicle are doing the government no favours. They are preaching to the converted; not to the unbelievers, which is the demographic, which should be targeted.
DPI has had some promise but, like that inconsequential unit, which sends out missives from the Ministry of the Presidency, both are generally reactive rather than proactive, and both have failed to convince the public of the worthiness of the administration’s actions.
Most of the time, they give more publicity to the opposition’s arguments when they try to counter. There is a rule in responding to criticism, which the government has failed to appreciate: sometimes it is better not to say anything than to say something which will make you appear foolish.
The APNU+AFC Coalition should be worried. It is not as if they are facing a barrage of criticism from all over. The PPPC is a one-man army. It is Jagdeo alone. Yet, despite him being the only opposition figure of consequence, the ruling parties seem unable to handle him. Therefore, one man has the government on the retreat – just as how it took one man to cause the government to fall.
What is ironic is that when there is an election campaign, the PNCR and APNU hire expensive PR and advertising firms to get their message across. But if they would have spent a tenth of that money during their years in office; if they hired PR specialists to help boost their image when in government, they would not need to spend all those billions to help them win an election.
Instead of hiring trained and experienced specialists to do their work, the political parties, including the PPPC, put more faith in amateurs and loyalists to try to brandish their image.
Considering that talent is available to the government, it is often laughable, some of the persons who are chosen to help promote the image of the government while in office.
The situation is getting quite desperate now. The government is now increasingly isolated internationally because of its response to the No Confidence Motion and the verdicts of the Caribbean Court of Justice.
Even Caricom, which for months kept its mouth sealed and failed to comment on the problems in Guyana, has now been forced to say that it is monitoring the situation. Caricom, of course, has been inconsistent when it comes to commenting on political situations. It has failed to offer any support for the resolution of the impasse, which now exists. This is quite unlike the public positions it took in relation to the recent protests in Haiti and last year to the protests in Dominica. But Guyana is home to the Secretariat of the Community, and it may feel disinclined to involve itself in our political squabbles despite the obvious dangers to democracy in the Caribbean.
A strong, specialist-led PR campaign would have kept Caricom in line. There would have been no need for the Secretary General of the Caribbean Community to have made the comments he recently made. But without that PR element which would have emphasised that Guyana’s problems are our own and should be solved without external interference, the PNCR and APNU are being isolated internationally, and now regionally.

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Self-inflicted international isolation

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