H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – The VP’s Facebook irony

Mar 28, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Due must be given where it has been earned. I must say that Guyana’s Vice President is one cunning political operator, one scheming leader, a great pretender of unmatched proportions. When there is examination of the workings of his clever mind, peering closely into his seesawing handiworks, I often shake my head in regret. It is the regret that comes from thinking how far ahead this country would be from where it is, how much the circumstances of the Guyanese people would be surrounded by what speaks to assets well employed, leadership at its principled best, and actions that brook neither argument nor resistance.

When Guyana’s Vice President went the other way, took the dark road, embraced the underground, as his bosom companions, then Guyanese lost more than they can ever count. As part of his uninterrupted concoctions, the Vice President now came up with channeling his diehards to Facebook to spread the messages. I have news for my brother, the VP: fewer and fewer citizens believe what he offers anymore. Not even when such is from his own mouth. The nothing if not tricky VP knows this, which is why he summons his reserves to take the fight to Facebook to confuse and confront local enemies. The objectives are to camouflage his government’s track record, given all this oil money and business activity; to distract from the abject leadership weaknesses, none more so than his own; and to deafen the public with messages and postures that have no traction in the regular media.

Why walk and do in the night, under the cover of darkness, what can be walked and be done in the daytime, when there is light, and no stumbling? We have all these media outlets, including the greatest portion that is controlled, or significantly influenced in some mutually agreed upon manner, by the Vice President, and the dark back alleys of Facebook is now the channel of choice. I would have thought that a leader of the VP’s stature, his powerful tenure, and his long relationship with the Guyana’s once hallowed Fourth Estate, gave him the confidence to face the press and face the people with whatever had to be communicated, contended, contradicted, clashed over, and to wherever such concluded. Oh no! for the irony (and it is disparaging to the VP) is that Facebook it must be, with surrogates carrying the load for him.

Here is another irony of vulgar beauty. There was a time in the world when the Ten Commandments had to be written in stone. Another time, when the first Americans spoke via smoke signals sent. Why, even America’s hallowed Constitution, and the glitters of Shakespeare were written with feathers snatched from squawking poultry using a combination of homemade glue, soot, and more to get ink. If this sounds like shaded paraphrasing of P.J. O’Rourke, it is. And up until recently, to get a message across sea and space, one had to spit on a little square or rectangle of paper, a stamp, and then send with hope in heart and prayer on lips. In Guyana, a magnificent man by the name of Forbes Burnham reduced press writings and readings to the equivalent of a couple of middle pages, and two radio stations, mostly the Guyana Chronicle(s) of his era. The PPP’s Mirror prevailed against the suffocating tide somehow, with Dayclean then removing the scales from our eyes. For sure, they were somewhat ragged in appearance, but they were never rags, but treasures. It was of those times, and the inventiveness that necessity commanded.

Now here we are today, and my brother, the VP, has at his disposal Stabroek News and Kaieteur News with a total of 60 plus pages daily, and over 150 on Sundays, and this wily political performer seeks refuge in Facebook for resonance to his messages. Is Facebook still such a desperate ‘must have’ when all the combined hundreds of pages and oceans of airtime of the State media, and much of private media, in paper or cyber form, are at the VP’s beck and call?  Does he still need the fancy verbal footwork, and written cosmetics, of his fanatics on Facebook, when the likes of the mighty American Ambassador, Sarah Ann Lynch, and Exxon’s Alistair Routledge have both declared how well pleased they are with the PPP Government?

This is more than irony.  It is desperation, and it is the desolation that comes from the self-destructions weaved by the VP into his words and works.  Now, he exhorts his people to rise and rail on Facebook, to take a few sheaves from his book and rant to their hearts content about the glories of PPP governance.  Seeing that there are all these many other media outlets, is this really necessary?  To ask and answer, since the VP’s own deeds now catch up with him, he has no choice but to content himself with self-imposed house arrest, and sic his dogs of war on a disbelieving Guyanese population.

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

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• GHK Lall, great pretender, Guyanese, H@rd Truths, Vice President

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