H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – Is there no decency left in this country?

Apr 15, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

---

Kaieteur News – I was an eyewitness to a concerned young Guyanese woman manifesting signs of anger and anxiety.  It is of the assault via social media on another female around her age group who is a member of the local press corps.  She has been besmirched and victimized in the most reprehensible and vulgar manner by PPP functionaries under the cover of darkness, and from behind the barricade of Facebook.

Because of its anonymity, Facebook has become the crowded stronghold of assorted scoundrels, bushwhackers, vagabonds, and perverts.  These menaces to local society ply their trade there, and on taxpayers’ dollars to boot.  Men from the vantage point of high public offices vilifying women, while insulting the intercourses in our society.

Surely, this cannot be governance under the watch of President Ali.  I ask of the President: is this what leadership and the presidency has degraded to, this repugnance?  Of Prime Minister Phillips: what about what is going on under the nose?  For the entire PPP governance apparatus, there is this baseline inquiry: is there no sense of decency left?  Is there nothing that is sacred and off-limits, hence untouchable?  This is not governance; it cannot even be dignified by the label of politics.  It is a heinous crime, and one that calls for a public flogging, as a start.

It would be interesting to observe where the women in the PPP Government cabinet are on this odious development by their comrades, most likely male.  It would be still more revealing to absorb the reaction of regular PPP media contributors, defenders, and spinners in what they say and write about this abomination.  They are quick to rise in righteous indignation at any and all perceptions of improper advances, attacks, and assaults on things Indian, highly inappropriate, and unacceptable.  If this is the sick, perverted company that men and women, leaders and lackeys, in the PPP Government can embrace as their bosom companions, then there is not much left to be said about them.

I take in this, and shake my head in stunned disbelief that this is where oil has brought this country, its government, its leadership.  A young woman doing her job, asking frank questions, pushing for straight answers on oil management and issues, and this is where matters deteriorate.  No! this cannot be happening.  No one in the PPP or PNC can be this shameless, this malicious, this vengeful, this full of the poisons that spew forth and sully others.  Who in the PPP Government gave a licence to do so?  Who, like a King of England, let loose the social media assassins?

What is there to fear in this oil that others can be torn to pieces in such a whimsical and capricious manner?  When ordinary questions, the persistent questions tabled, about oil and corrupt practices, about leadership malfeasances in office can lead to a social media outrage of this unequalled monstrousness, then Guyana has collapsed into a dark, deep cesspit.  What is it about our oil wealth that frightens this government so much?

What are leaders in the PPP Government so upended that the only resort is for their paid cowards, and their henchmen, to scurry over to their social media lairs and blast others with their venoms and infectious viruses?  If and when women are considered to be fair targets, then it is fair to conclude that children are not immune from anything that is lurid and putrid, as invented by PPP social media gangs moonlighting in high government offices. Taking this as the now settled norm, then it is fair to ask what (if anything), and who (if anyone) is immune in this country?

Of the American Ambassador, and those of equivalent diplomatic rank from other prestigious nations, I respectfully ask whether these are the kinds of people that are entertained in official functions at residences?  I would hope not; for as an American taxpayer, it would make the blood stir.  What we have in Guyana today is not just vileness, it is madness of a particular sort, a sickness of an incurable kind.  We huff and puff, and are all sound and fury, when a woman is brutalized and battered beyond recognition in her domestic confines.  Where are we in this instance, when a woman is smashed to smithereens within the confines of what are her professional and principled journalistic pursuits?

The Hon. Minister of Social Protection is usually properly vocal about domestic battery and abused women, I would be impressed (all Guyana would) if she were to be courageous enough, and possessing the sufficiency of character, to say in the most public fashion: this has gone too far, this will never be acceptable, and this only incurs condemnation, flagellation, and damnation.  It is ironic that in the PPP ranks, there are those who are blatantly lacking in moral and ethical character, but they sponsor atrocities on the character of others so recklessly, so wantonly.  It is character assailed, a woman’s name tainted, and the Guyana press corps put on notice.  Who is going to stand up against the ongoing floods of indecency?  Who is so contemptible as to remain silent?

(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.)

---

• GHK Lall, Guyanese, PPP, vagabonds, woman

---