Government targeting critics

Jan 03, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The recent announcement by Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo that his government will be going after its critics abroad and its attempts to serve political activist, Rickford Burke with a summons to attend court here have touched a raw nerve among Guyanese.

Citizens are growing wary of the subtle attempts by the regime to curtail and control what they say. They see this every week with the crass disposition of VP Jagdeo at his press conference when he is challenged to provide answers on government policies. His resort to a cuss-out of reporters and his opponents is often followed up by allied media houses and online blogs doing same.

But we caution today that the PPPC Government and its media operators may think that they are artful because of their combination of smoothness, crudeness, vileness. We burst that bubble, for PPPC channels and instruments are not as sophisticated as they think. The giveaway is when dissenters are targeted, the objectionable are faulted, and when those who speak their conscience, or write their pain, are attacked. The government’s game then becomes clear. The bottom line is that the PPPC Government, its leaders, its propagandists and sycophants have no room, no use, no tolerance for honest disagreement. In the minds of the ruling party’s people, all must speak with the same voice, or all must stay silent. Otherwise, be ready for the wrath of a government bent on total control, complete domination.

This newspaper incurs its share of abuse and viciousness. We can take it, and are ready for more. We are confident that our work is accurate and educates this nation on what is really going on here, and what the government and its leaders passionately do not want citizens to know. We speak of glaring mismanagement of the vital oil sector, and it is a crisis for the government and its people, who are fattened by their enslaving relationships with foreign companies, especially ExxonMobil. We write of the lack of robust State institutions, plus those missing, and we are transformed into Public Enemy Number 1. We call out leaders in the government for their doubletalk, and walking back of what they once stood for, and their rage spirals from the exposures and accompanying embarrassment. To make themselves look big, they resort to verbal brawling, which is now second nature to most of them. If the frequent revelation of things that the government and leaders prefer to remain secret brings down the fury of those in charge, then we are ready and willing to deal with that, as it comes.

Similarly, when a decades-long entity like the Guyana Human Right Association (GHRA) speaks out, takes a stand, against what the PPPC Government shabby dealings, it finds itself being aimed at, and fired upon, with every intention of weakening its work, if not bringing it down altogether. The only truth in Guyana is now that of the government’s and the only repository for facts and honesty is the government again. This is the paranoia that stalks Guyana today, where a posture by a citizen or a group (any dissenting citizen or group) attracts the vengeance of government soldiers.

Like the GHRA, there was this overnight development last year involving accounts and accountability, with allegations of fraud in the instance of IDPADA-G. It seems that the machinery and agents of the PPPC Government go into overdrive to beat up and smear citizens, who exercise their right to free expression of honest opinions. We can speak to that with authority since we have been targeted so often.

What the government needs to realise is that the more it lashes out, the more determined citizens become to stand their ground that they are doing right by their fellow Guyanese. What leaders in the PPPC Government must come to grips with, is that the more they lash out, the more they are secretive, the more they are of the vindictive, the more they expose their farces and failures. The more they do so, the more grounds they give Guyanese to protest, object, speak, and write. The pot keeps boiling.

Bharrat Jagdeo, critics, Guyanese, PPPC, Vice President

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Government targeting critics

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