Gail Teixeira on the hot seat – she cooked herself

Mar 26, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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H@rd Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – PPP Government MP, Ms. Gail Teixeira, found herself on the hot seat last week.  She almost cooked herself stirring around and jumping about and bubbling over with what she professed to know.  The problem for the MP is that the public record does not help any step of the way.  Now, I single out one of the pressure cooker items that the venerable Ms. Teixeira found too hot to handle.  She danced around and passed sharp questions from one hand to the next, when she was forced to give straight and persuasive answers to one of the most recognizable world bodies.  It had to do with the PPP Government’s abuse of the media, its targeting of journalists, and efforts at intimidating them from doing their job.

In the matter of Kaieteur News’ Senior Journalist, Ms. Davina Bagot and the vilification poured on her, the best that Ms. Teixeira could haul out of her bag of canned answers was that that has to do with private business, and that her government, viz’, her handlers, was ‘unable and unwilling’ just to deal with such matters alone.  I have seen and heard copouts; well, that was a crawl out and a slink out.  It was obvious that Ms. Teixeira would be more at home in the friendly confines of the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, where she has a whole posse to hold her hand and supply her with verbal walking sticks.  I say this because what the veteran MP put out to the UN Human Rights Committee (CCPR) was not just insanity but insipidity.  A member of the Fourth Estate, a female one for that matter, is isolated and viciously attacked in the public domain by empowered government functionaries, and Ms. Teixeira response was that the PPP Government interprets that to fall within the fence of private business.

All Guyana knows, and the rest of the world knows, that a PPP minister, a lawmaker-a hustler and abuser and dirty tricks operator all rolled into one-for the government is among those fingered for his alleged involvement in the Davina Bagot abhorrence.  Hers was not an isolated case, as other media contributors have also been vilified and victimized. In response, Ms. Teixeira managed to hold on to a ray of the fading light in her eyes and sputtered that the government is not ready to address matters like those.  Will it ever be ready?  Is the government about freedom of thought and freedom of expression?  Or is it about abusing women found to be too pushy, especially when their hard questions have to do with oil?  Is the PPP Government about a free and unfettered media?  Or is it more concerned about aiding and abetting (and consorting) with criminals held close to its bosom?  And protecting revolting comrades by any means and whatever it costs?

Because the PPP Government and its leading lights have dug huge craters all over the place, it was MP Teixeira’s grim task to do continued damage control.  Locally, she passes muster due to her special status; in the international domain however, she is seen as simply another camouflage artist who must be carefully watched and absorbed with a stiff slug of the hard stuff.  In the instance of Leonora and ensnaring no less a luminosity than His Excellency, the president, Sister Gail went to London and Lagos before returning to her linguistic sparring with the CCPR interrogators.  The government was asked by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission for an answer and the government answered and on which it is now waiting for an answer to its answer.  Ms. Teixeira has been around forever.  She has learnt the tricks of the political trade well, and is a master (sorry, diva) of the bob and weave game.  When to skim (not a correct representation of what took place); when to string along (waiting for an answer); and when to shrug off (private business).  This old PPP hand, which is no reference to time or season, may have fooled herself into thinking that she made rings around the CCPR with her cute answers.  The brutal fact that is closer to home is that Ms. Teixeira did exceedingly well in drawing a noose around the necks of her government and its leaders. The truth is that people like this remarkable practitioner of the fine art of Guyanese politics have grown too accustomed to being queens of domestic castles.  So, when they set foot out such shadows, they come across as puny and pathetic peasants.

The CCPR’S public stripping and the resulting humiliations are not all of Ms. Teixeira’s making.  The fact remains that she has been around too many low and unethical people so long that their scents accompany her wherever she shows her face. She just cannot shake off those cloying smells, even if she wanted to, which I believe that she doesn’t.  This is what spending a large part of one’s lifetime in bad company could do to good people.  The odds multiply.  Like the mafia, once in, there is no way out, other than feet first.  The independent media will have its own moment, abused pros their day.

(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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• Gail Teixeira, GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, journalist, public

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