Rule of law and incitement to hostility – think of one kind only

Mar 09, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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H@rd Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – On occasion, I read some of the contributions in the letter columns.  I would hurry past the known characters, aka the unreconstructed partisans; they are not conducive to tranquility of the spirit.  There was, however, a gem of an epistle from Mr. Frank DeAbreu, and an offering from H. Singh that stirred.  In Mr. Dabreu’s writing, there was tucked away in its folds that striking construction, which many the world over, including Guyana, embrace: the “rule of law”.

It has a comforting, inspiring ring to it: the rule of law. Regrettably, we cannot talk about the rule of law, when one national leader comes across as the epitome of what is thuggish.  Cross path, and it could be curtains.  Mess with the bully, now one of the masters of the realm, at one risk.  Where is the application, reach and power, of the rule of law, when another national leader gets away with the equivalent of verbal murder whenever he speaks, whenever cornered?  A regular citizen does a half or a quarter of what spews out of leaders, and the police would be summoned, handcuffs come out, charges readied.  Offensive.  Breach of the peace.  Menacing to society.  In normal circumstances, I would call on the Hon. Attorney General to take a stand.  But Guyana is not a normal place, and I think that the Attorney General has conditioned himself to be somewhat tolerant of what goes on, especially when the sources are considered.  We cannot talk, whisper, even stutter about the rule of law in Guyana, when the PPP Government’s cabinet is populated as it is.  In the most searing and revealing summation: those masquerading as lawmakers are among the worst of protected lawbreakers.  Crimes against objecting citizens found objectionable.  Crimes against frank truths.  Crimes against democracy and clean governance.  Check on who are among the leading property owners around.  Source of funds, anybody?  No president, no former president, no aspiring president should ever have such lawbreakers as their bosom companions.  But they do, so what does that say about they themselves?  It is why numerous Guyanese make their own laws on the roads, perfect their own repugnant standards of communication, overflow with aggression and hostility.  They learn from the best, those who are at the top.  In Guyana, the rule of law means that those with power (or the reckless) can runover the law, make their own rules, and ruin the environment at will.

On H. Singh’s part, the emphasis was on Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo’s charge to his people to swamp the channels of social media, and stuff the PPP’s messages and positions-the peculiar truths of the former president-down the throats of those standing in the way.  It would be those Guyanese with their contrasting, clashing, views and postures that collide with the mantras of the PPP.  When what Dr. Jagdeo had pushed his people towards came to my attention, I believed his call hardened to this: confront them, corner them, and condemn them in the strongest and sharpest terms.  Those are my words, my thinking, and my interpretation.  They still stand today.

When a leader with the stature of the former president-a luminous figure to the blind, deaf, and dumb-could energize and galvanize his fundamentalists to invade cyberspace and suffocate dissenting views, I consider that to be rank incitement?  What is that if not the delivery of outright hostility in the most brazen forms against citizens whose voices must not be heard?  Truth be told, many voices, in the world of social media platforms include both PPP and PNC voices.  But when the objective is to snuff out dissenting positions, to muzzle different opinions, then that is not democracy in action.  It is tyranny travelling from toehold to stranglehold.  If any other citizen were to spread what the former president instilled in his loyalists, then the first charge would be incitement to hostility.  I believe that the second could very justifiably encircle racial hostility.  The PPP brigade of fanatics is not instigated and unleashed to go after the likeminded.  They are unchained and commanded to go after political opponents, real and imagined.  Where does this logically take things in this country, if not to the grimness and ugliness of racial hostility, given that political opponents are of a different ethnicity?  This is my position, what I think of the incitement situation.

Worse still, a known PNC supporter, who happens to be African Guyanese, articulates a criticism, and PPP watchers and defenders are muted.  But, if that same public contribution is made by an Indian (select any such undesirable), then the intensity of emotion, passion, and reaction is unmatched in its breadth and depth.  There are two objectives to what I interpret to be reverse racial hostility, in that it is directed at one from the same tribe.  First, it is to intimidate and cow into quiet the offender, the racial renegade and betrayer.  The second is no less sinister: it is to send a message to other Indians who may be harboring ideas to speak out, actually say something about what is going on in this now shattered democracy, this bartered natural resources patrimony.

In my thinking, the rule of law is dead.  Meantime, incitement to hostility is alive and spreading its wings daily.  I invite citizens to check for themselves the architects, the authors, and the sponsors.

(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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