Fair comment

May 25, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – “Fair is foul, and foul is fair”, so chanted the witches in the opening scene of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It is where the standing order of things is tampered with, thrown into disarray, where truth has fled, and darkness reigns. This is the ground that PPP/C Government now claims as its exclusive zone, and is apparently so pleased itself with its efforts that it expands its beating down and banishing away of all dissenting voices, every unfavourable position. Now, this includes even those in the judiciary when things are held up.

Anything and anyone that interferes with the fair narrative of a government reflecting the ravages of steroids is fair game for its special attention, and for a taste of its bitter political mischief. Not even the hallowed judiciary is exempted from the verbal missiles of an irate PPP/C Government, and its chief spokespeople. Mischief is afoot in this land and along with political darkness “hover through the fog and filthy air.”

The Government, with Vice President Jagdeo and Attorney General Nandlall in the forefront, is only too eager to rush across forbidden bridges and to fracture standing traditions of decency, to trample upon existing norms, and to plunder whatever goodwill is left in this country. From the perspective of an overly deranged government everything boils down to an existential crisis of “us against them”, of good versus evil. Even when no such thing exists, no evidence supports any such contention, there is this hue and cry of wounded sensibilities, of righteous indignation, of great harms being done to the fair brow of a longsuffering PPPC Government.

Both Vice President Jagdeo and AG Nandlall have gotten good, through self-training and long practice, at throwing these divisive verbal tantrums, and then resorting to oldest of cheap political tricks. It is under the umbrella of “fair comment.” Which group could comment more frequently, more fully, and more foully in this country, if not the PPP/C and its leading mouthpieces? When the government and its people should be setting a quiet and convincing example of supreme self-confidence, and of unruffled calm, both are more comfortable descending in the bowels of the gutter to brawl and upend those who stand in their way. But they call their ugly verbal brawling fair comment. They are proud to give the noble heading of fair comment to their mudslinging and mudwrestling.

Instead of a PPP/C Government rolling up its sleeves and working assiduously to knit and heal the broken pieces of this society, it is more interested in, definitely bent on, fragmenting what holds tentatively in place, what is fighting a rearguard action to stave off a marauding government, which will take no prisoners. One which makes sure it leaves no witnesses to its vicious barbarisms, its oral carnages.

The PPP/C Government is in the driver’s seat, and there is not a whiff of political competition on the horizon, not a single political leadership presence of substance, capable of compelling a stop-in-the-tracks pausing to its rampages. Yet, the government and its leadership are not content unless they can unleash another round of crude bullying, while doing so from within the sanctuary of ostensible “fair comment.” It is a crying shame that this has become a characteristic of a government dedicated to the boorish, the churlish, and buffoonish. This is a new era in the history of this country, and it is the same old PPP/C Government, now that it is host to a visiting world, and men and women of immaculate credentials.

The President himself has been known to relish what comes across as the thuggish. The Vice President could hold clinics on what ranges from the loutish to the viperish, and the storied place of both in government. And the Attorney General has proven to be both swordfish and waspish when it suits his purposes. But in the minds of these pristine leaders of a twisted government, this is all good and well, and fits seamlessly under the tent of “fair comment.” This is the roiling mental, psychological cosmos of the PPP/C Government and its top verbal actors. There is this remarkable devaluing of what should be untouchable, and what should be left as it is.

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Fair comment

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Fair comment

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