The problem with messengers

Mar 25, 2020 News

It is a timeless problem, a serious concern for those blessed (or burdened) with the responsibility to deliver. It is to deliver a heavy package that is not well received, looked upon angrily, and reacted to sharply, unsparingly. This is the plight and reality under which the messengers in Guyana function today.
A while back, messengers were an endangered species: if the message was unfavourable and far from what comforts, then the bringers and carriers of the news were taken care of in the worst way possible: they paid with their heads. Currently, in Guyana, there are many more messengers, with an intrepid few from the population coming forward to contribute to the national conversation. Some are politically sponsored, but quite a few are self-appointed guardians of what they perceive to be a different and higher standard.
To do the latter in this society draws the wrath of local political gods, and they will come after the objectionable with considerable skills and tools. The objectionable are those who refuse to partner with their positions, for it is either their way, since no other way is tolerated or allowed. Thus, the persistent parsing for truth and accuracy is dashed on the shoals of detestation and denigration, lost is the patient plodding towards a destination that reveals all, conceals none.
It is a demanding, thankless obligation that is embraced as a calling by engaged professionals or detached patriotic citizens. The trouble starts with any spirited standing for and insisting on the balance that just may lead to the irrepressible finality of truth. When such is embraced and followed, the furies are unleashed. They usually are in Guyana, when the influential do not get their way, do not get to tell, read, or hear the desired story that brooks no dissension. A while back Kaieteur News was made to feel the brunt of political raging. Of recent, a sister entity has encountered an almost identical fate. Like we said, it can be a stressful occupation, but it is not exchangeable, though tense, tough circumstances envelop.
Things have plummeted precipitously here, with the acrimonious and perilous representing the full-time norm.
The problem is that the existence of whatever controversial issue is under review still remains, and it probes for more space in which to be ventilated and to flourish. Thus, the Guyanese formula that now dominates exhibits certain unmoving characteristics: the self-serving details are harnessed and cemented, the vocabulary customised to pound and conquer with one constant message: this is what it is, what it has to be, with no care for misrepresentation or probable error.
This is what is strengthened here daily during this tortured, nightmarish Elections Season. Those public messengers who beg to differ are pummeled first, then crushed later. It is a mandatory feature of those positioning for power, through brigades of dedicated agents. They are intent on suppressing any strand that is different from the one perfected. And when that falters, then there is resorting to distorting.
These are the unpatriotic priorities of those locked in bitter competition, who feel that they are losing ground, hence the need to act, if only to control the damage and make the problem go away. Instead the issue-always challenging, never less than sharply controversial-does not go away meekly or placidly, since there are those public messengers made of sterner stuff, who refuse to shrink before all that is delivered.
Savvy political pressures are crafted and inflicted, through the clever and the not so clean, in determined efforts to strangle into surrendering. There must be only one position, and the favoured strategy is to neutralise those who dare to present matters otherwise. The blatant history has been when people’s money is marshaled and misused time and again to quiet, to steer into kowtowing to the party line. The more nuanced tactic, done sophisticatedly, is to disrupt and crowd out other voices through unrelenting and remorseless approaches that favour only self.
This has been our malevolent politics; it now occupies pride of place as an inseparable aspect of our deceptive and sabotaging national culture. Elections provide time and occasion to showcase our grand talents to repress or repel what is considered unhelpful to political group vision and cause.

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The problem with messengers

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