Outrage at the moral darkness of LGE franchise exercise 

Jun 23, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – A number of Guyanese have expressed public shock and disappointment that Opposition supporters came out in the last Local Government Elections, and voted how they did. Questions and concerns have been articulated as to how APNU supporters could have voted for the group, after what transpired in the bruising 2020 elections season. The position has some substance, but then it struggles for traction in the face of what has become the norm since then.

Without a doubt, the Coalition tried its hand in multiple ways to thwart the will of the people, and there is no arguing with that, for the record is there in black and white, and red and green also. To say that the Coalition lost its moral compass might even qualify as an understatement. But to seize upon that alone, and apply the same glaring absence of a moral compass and a moral anchor to those who came out and voted for the Opposition in the last LGE is rank overstretch. It misses the mark by the widest of margins, considering the sum of what has taken place here since the PPPC returned to power.

Yes, the governing Coalition did its best to rig the 2020 elections, but the PPPC Government has been nothing but rigging every aspect of Guyanese life since that most torrid of seasons. Vital institutions of state have been coerced into compromising standards, to the detriment of the Guyanese environment, future, and population. What the Coalition failed to do at the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) the PPPC Government has succeeded in doing with the Environmental Protection Agency, with the Guyana Police Force, with the venerable National Assembly, and with the organs of local governance in the regions, to name a few of them. What about the moral darkness that has blanketed those sensitive state agencies, those delicate arms of democracy?  Who can vote for such abominations?

The PPPC leadership, when it was in the opposition ranks, took the high patriotic road with the 2016 ExxonMobil oil contract, and how it was going to do so much for the Guyanese people by addressing its lopsided terms and conditions. The PPPC leadership, now with the reins of power firmly fixed in their hands, have walked back, reneged, welshed on what they promised, what was committed to, back in the throes of the 2020 elections environment. To falsify intentions first, and since then to seek to mystify the Guyanese nation, through red herrings and other deceptive practices, with something as pivotal as oil, is more than moral darkness, moral lassitude, and moral sickness. It is of immorality and dishonesty run amok, and without bottom, or with pointed disdain and insult for the people whose votes were pleaded for, who were lied to in pathological fashion, so as to get in the seat of power, and enrich self and family. What about those who still voted for them?  Remember to consider the arrival of Chinese businessman Su, who compromised our own Vice President. What about the bulldozing of the homes of innocent citizens of Mocha Arcadia; what about the nastiness that now envelopes and being revealed about a sitting PPPC Government Minister, Nigel Dharamlall and the embarrassment of Permanent Secretary, Mae Thomas whose US visa was revoked. And from these tips of the iceberg, the extent of an unmatched moral crisis seizes and overwhelms. These are the unprecedented mothers of all moral crises, yet people voted for the PPPC.

What the PPPC Government, its helpless, likely compromised, leaders engage in today is still infinitely worse, tragically more destitute of morals and ethics, than what the Coalition endeavoured to do in 2020, and for which it rightly fell. Today, when Government and leaders stand shoulder to shoulder with ExxonMobil, the emperor of exploitation, to drain the Guyanese people of hope and what is their due, then there is, can be, no moral specter that is thicker, deeper, and more damaging. To try to thwart the will of the electorate through cheap tricks and contemptible cheatings represented a new and deplorable level of moral darkness by the Coalition. But to emerge victorious in a brawl of an elections battle, and to turn around and betray the prosperity of the whole nation simply does not have any measure, possesses no equivalent, where moral crises and leadership turpitudes are the prime concerns.

The agents of the Coalition stuttered and stumbled with their foolish spreadsheets and other rigging appliances in 2020. In 2023, the leading men in the PPP/C Government have not only lost their lines, but they have also lost their minds. They cannot speak to truth; they flee from facing Guyanese due to the traitorous relationship that they have forged with ExxonMobil. What greater moral darkness/crisis can there be than that? When so much hinges on this oil, when so much was promised to be done, and when so much trust was placed in the PPP/C Government of today, there is no bigger betrayal, no greater moral and financial disaster that is faced by the Guyanese people. What Guyanese look at is not a crisis. Guyanese live with an ongoing and intensifying catastrophe.

(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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