Latest update September 22nd, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 10, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column
Kaieteur News – There was a case before the US Supreme Court over three decades ago where a remarkable statement was coined by one of the justices. It concerned the incendiary issue of the extent of free speech in the matter of Texas v. Johnson. Justice William Brennan had this to say: “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” What could be more controversial, more inflammatory, than burning of the American Flag, a most sacred symbol by Mr. Johnson?
In the local realm, Guyana’s Constitution protects freedom of expression in letter and in spirit. Now, I point to where it has been taken by the PPP Government, though its willing appointed agencies, and its volunteer (perhaps…) group of loyalists incensed to intolerance for what is construed to be “offensive or disagreeable”. Or, even beyond that, because it is feared to lead to the revealing, the inconvenient, and the alarming. Thus, the standard has become that such expression, despite legitimate purposes, must not to be given any space for foundation and ventilation. The great anxiety is that the resulting sunlight could be hellish.
Five instances, four of more recent vintage, furnish a trail of evidence that confirms with concrete solidity what I term the frightening progression of suppression of expression in Guyana. Expression be it a thought, an idea, a public posture, or full-blown conviction-has come under increasingly withering fire, has incited hemming in, cornering, and coercing into tinier and tinier spaces. This is to the point that only favorable voices, solely cooperative stances, exclusively prostrated consciences, find acceptability and traction in high government elevations, and in the low pastures of everyday commerce of interactions.
First, and with no sequence observed, there was the Black Guyanese entity, IDPADA-G. Its work worries the government; its constituencies found wanting; and its senior agents recognized as objects of resistance, human platforms for difference. The suppression takes the form of effectively shutting down by the powerful expediency of starving of funds fueled by the most questionable premises. Whether it was to neutralize the expressive stances of an election’s commissioner found “disagreeable”, or to divide and diminish the standing of this entity and its expressive actions, the fact is that the force of the State was arrayed against it, to bring it to boot. Speak not, do not go against, and nothing will be found that would be considered “offensive.” Except that the opposite occurred, and retaliatory suppressive action was unleashed.
Second, some civic activists have been very vocal on a range of issues, the safety of the environment being one among several, only for them to be excoriated by the highest lips, and their rights to honest expression be trampled upon, however unfounded it may be. It was not; not in any instance, be it relative to the GY-EITI, or Houston, or insurance. What goes on here, when citizens utilizing Constitutional protections on issues of principle and concern are pilloried and pummeled? But pulverized the Radziks were, and the Red Thread are.
For, third, there is the instance of the Guyana Human Rights Association, and its head, Mr. McCormack. Like IDPADA-G, from the PPP Government’s side, there was talk about money and deficiencies, though a careful line was walked around fraud in the GHRA’s case. To identify the unusual in the GY-EITI leads to these bombastic and scurrilous charges, intended to denigrate reputations first, then to devastate to a state of impotence. Interestingly, the US Ambassador saw it fit to give the GHRA an audience, which by itself conveys growing American unease at the creep towards a totalitarian State in this oil rich nation.
Fourth, the independent media posits ideas, raises questions, and fields concerns, about that same oil richness and the nature of its management, and PPP Government agents go on the warpath. They paint mere inquirers in the worst of demonic colors, as guilty of unpatriotic vices. I give the President in Bartica and his people in Leonora; I point to the Hon. Vice President and his intensifying tendency to stridency and caustic indecency. If the free expression of ideas and visions of oil are found “offensive and disagreeable”, then only speech about garbage collection and the sewage system are cherished as acceptable.
Finally, though not in the category of the aforementioned luminaries, the PPP Government used the resources of the Offices of the President and the Prime Minister to smear via social media. The purpose was to intimidate, and to silence, like has followed since, with claims about fraud, debt, missteps with others identified above. In every instance, despite the powerful weaponry of men engaged in the monstrous, abject failure has resulted. In this fearsome progression of suppression of principled expression, of patriotic consciences, two questions rise above all others: Where to and who next; By what new formidable concoction; And, with what ultimate objectives in mind? A ‘One Guyana’ speaking with one voice about the one and only truth; the PPP Government’s truth alone?
Is this oil a blessing or a curse?
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