H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – A One-Question Democracy

Jul 19, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – President Ali repeatedly says that he is about transparency in his conduct of government affairs.  If any other Guyanese tried pulling that one, he or she risks being lifted into an effigy displayed repeatedly.  Regarding the affairs of government, they have been mostly sordid ones.  Like most affairs in the world of men and women, the transparency of Excellency Ali has been riddled with secrecy.  It is how transparency gets a bad name, how the President makes a mockery of democracy through his many calumnies.

The newest one from President Ali was this limit of one question per media house.  This is to where freedom of the press, and freedom to speak have degenerated under the surgical hand of Dr. Ali.  I do not for a moment believe that this one-question abomination emerged out of the head of the President; after all, he is too busy with his other gimmicks and gadgets of office that fascinate him so much.  But to cutout and closeout with such reckless abandon the interests of the people, and their inquiries, is not something that redounds to the credit of the national leader.

What kind of comprehensive answer can a single question prompt from an increasingly wily political operator like Excellency Ali?  My second thought is whether President Ali was hoping for, or expecting, a question along the lines of: ‘how do you do, sir?’  And with that it is over, as the quota of questions had just expired.  I shouldn’t have to tell the President this, as he knows it: limiting questioning to one inquiry signals that he has something to fear.  One question presses home the perception that the President has much to hide.  I have a soft word for the President that has the unbreakable firmness of stone: presidents living right don’t have anything to fear; presidents doing good don’t have anything to hide.  So, they never find it comforting to shelter behind one question. At least, not a President operating cleanly by the people who put him in office, not a President with the deepest sense of what the improper and unjust are.

To restrict independent journalists going about their jobs professionally to one question condemns a presidential press conference to a presidential press circus, results in a presidential witches’ brew. Regrettably, I find the disdainful to be proper, with circumstances demanding such.  Though President Ali may deny forever, talk a dairy farm’s worth of cheese, his regime has been a haven and coven of snakelike secrecies.  Secrecy is nothing but treachery of the highest order against expectant Guyanese.  Now to concoct this repugnance of one question per reporter is layering secrecy with more secrecy.

Dr. President, sir: the world cannot find enough words with brilliantine gleaming to speak about Guyana, and here the forlorn political leadership reality is that Guyanese are not allowed to ask frankly, openly, and freely, as it should be there is silencing by presidential decree.  What is that Dr. Ali, sir?  Why call this abomination on the presidential head?  Why besmirch the presidential standing with this deplorable desolation and unnecessary self-condemnation?  In view of President Ali’s reluctance, his palpable quivering, before the independent sections of the Fourth Estate, I have a recommendation that I offer most respectfully to His Excellency.

I think Presidential press conferences with this restrictive one-question condition should be discontinued.  Do everyone a favour, starting with the sacred presidential time and presence: Just don’t have them anymore.  Put self out of thine misery, oh divine leader; so that this latest strain of farce is a thing of the past.  It is better to stop all the motion, than go through the motions for a press conference to be on the record as having been held. Admittedly, the presidential time is precious, but that is no grounds on which to treat the interests, the concerns, and the priorities of the Guyanese people in such a cavalier, if not appalling manner.

A kindly word is in order for the President: press conferences are not a gift from heaven, as if the Guyanese people are waiting, actually, depending on the delivery of the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount or some sura from the sands of the Sahara.  No sir!  presidential press conferences are a necessary duty, a leader’s responsibility, the sum of his expressions that are vested in upholding the unblemished integrity of the citizenry.  When President Ali could come to the fullest, clearest appreciation of this, then he has no need for a mouthpiece; and definitely no need to speak from the side of his mouth, like some ventriloquist.

Mr. President: national leaders do not resort to these kinds of low, cheap trickeries.  Presidents do not go about the business of the people whistling in the wind or, worse still, whistling in the graveyard, as though it is midnight.  When there is reduction through this artful construction, a copyrighted concoction, of one question per reporter, then there is presidential darkness in the brightness of the noonday sun. Instead of going gently into the night, all Guyanese should rage against the dying of the light.  I am sorry President Ali, but one question only suggests an emerging Mussolini.

(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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