The PNC versus the PPP in the public sphere

Sep 16, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – When Mr. Naim Chan who hosts an early morning (7-8 in the AM) programme on CNS channel 6 called me to be his guest last Wednesday, I did say to him that people use their smart phones to look at interviews rather than on television.

He indicated that his show is transmitted live on his Facebook page. That is good because more viewers will be looking, and the more viewers you have the more people will react to things that irk them that they know are wrong and should be debunked.

The problem the ruling party has in this country is that for some strange, psychic reason, their supporters do not often use the mainstream media to confront immense fictions peddled by PNC and AFC personnel and their closely aligned propagandists.

If you examine the letter pages of the two popular dailies – Kaieteur News (KN) and Stabroek News (SN) – almost 90 percent of the letters are attacks on the government or letters from people who are critical of the PPP as a party.

How to explain this is difficult. First, PPP supporters feel that their party is in power so they will not bother with what the opposition says. Secondly, they see it as a waste of time to take on the critics of their government. Thirdly, they may hold the belief that Guyanese are not influenced by these people anyway so why bother to reply.

All three of these attitudes are wrong and dangerous. In a young country where minds could be easily swayed, it is imperative to confront alternative facts, egregious deceptions and sickening fictions.

Two names I can think of are doing the obligatory thing by taking on the detractors of the government – Messrs Robin Singh and Joel Bhagwandin. But there is a strange thing about these two gentlemen.

Their arguments are well laid out and poignant but they send their correspondence to the Guyana Chronicle only. That defies logic. KN and SN have larger circulations than the Chronicle.

I don’t think there is a person in Guyana that is so naïve to think that more people read the Chronicle than the KN and SN. If you are a government supporter and you naturally gravitate to the Chronicle for obvious politically determined reason, then that does not wipe away the reality that KN and SN reach more people.

Mr. Singh made some good replies to the hypocrites in civil society that needed a wider audience. His analyses were in the Chronicle only. Mr. Bhagwandin published in the Chronicle a masterpiece of a statistical analysis showing where the APNU+AFC government had performed disastrously. But it was printed in the Chronicle only.

These two gentlemen should learn from the experience of Kit Nascimento. Mr. Nascimento did an excellent critique of certain civil society groupings in a letter in the Stabroek News recently. He contended that they have no support in Guyana but are pompous and arrogant to arrogate to themselves the right to speak on behalf of the Guyanese people.

Mr. Darren Wade was the guest on the Gildarie-Freddie Kissoon Show last Wednesday and he spoke a glaring fiction. He said that in many countries the cost-of-living (COL) has gone down but not in Guyana.

The COL in Guyana is high. This columnist is feeling its impact and would welcome more cushions for the Guyanese people. But it is simply misleading to say that it has gone down in other countries when that is the opposite. Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine have devastated international trade and the fallout is harming all countries.

Minister of State in the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar was a guest last week on the Gildarie-Freddie Kissoon Show and he presented an excellent analysis of the deteriorating world economy and how it is harming small importing countries like Guyana.

He mentioned the exorbitant rise in cost of shipping a container. He cited the rise of the cost of every ingredient that goes into making margarine. I would advise PPP supporters to reply to Darren Wade by citing that analysis of the minister. It was a good description of how the COL is rising in Guyana and all other countries.

Finally, your letter confronting the fictions peddled by anti-government activists may not have been published. In such situations, please write me and send the letters to me. I know the editor-in-chief of KN. She is a decent professional. She does not see all the letters submitted but I will forward your unpublished letters to her. I have no contact with SN but I can publicise that SN is not printing your stuff. My phone is 614-5927, email – [email protected].

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

 

 

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