Slurs and slanders

Apr 08, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Loonies, obstructionists, busybodies and more. Those are among the terms of endearment that have been dug up to bring scorn on the work of Guyanese. Slurs and slanders like loonies and busybodies are not coming from gang leaders fighting over drug turf in some depressed ghetto.
They are from leading PPPC Government figures to diminish and incite disdain on the work of conscientious Guyanese. There is much to find of what is concerning with governance in Guyana. Naysayers, obstructionists, and unpatriotic are among some of the more polite descriptions used to lash principled Guyanese who stand up for their rights, who speak out about what worries them.

This is what sturdy women of honest effort and known commitment to things that are Guyanese to the core have had to endure. To take a stand against the gaps in a project that raises alarms about safety is to be unpatriotic. To approach the court when sensitive national institutions have failed at their duty is to be denounced as obstructionists. To articulate the anxieties harbored by many Guyanese before international bodies is to be dismissed as a loony. This is what Danuta Radzik, Vanda Radzik, Karen De Souza, and Elizabeth-Deane Hughes, among others have put before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. What they have shared represents only the tip of the iceberg relative to the abuses that have poured down from high functionaries and lower-level operators in the PPPC Government. There is now a settled culture in Guyana, where leaders lead the way with abusive language, and the army of followers in the government are only too delighted to expand and intensify the vilification and obscenities.

The PPPC Government and its leadership have earned an ugly reputation for secrecy on matters of oil and gas, on the environment, on what Guyanese are going to get from all the money already spent, or about to be spent. The Wales gas-to-energy project has been mired in disagreements and disputes from the inception. Instead of having honest discussions with Guyanese, the government and its leadership concluded that Guyana is better served by labeling and tarnishing the reputation of citizens found to be offensive. They are those who raise honest objections about oil and gas governance in general, and leadership impotence specifically. The PPPC Government is so low, so limited in standards, that women activists are attacked, women in the independent media are singled out and battered by men of dark bearing, and the darkest type of character.

There is a female minister who has responsibility for gender violence. Yet when her own comrades inflict vile abuse on women who raise their hand to question or object, the same minister forgets all the positive and powerful things that she claims to be about. Another minister, the man with some sort of official link to the oil and gas sector, had this to say: “I can assure you that government has made no comments or derogatory remarks about civil society activists….” This is the make-believe Alice in Wonderland world to which Guyana has been transformed today. The minister’s assurance isn’t worth the spit that seeks to polish over what has been the vulgar reality of the PPPC Government’s treatment of those who dare to run afoul of its plans. One minister has stuffed her ears, and the other minister blindfolded his eyes. Both have frozen their minds, give way to the biggest abuser in Guyana today.

Vice President Jagdeo these days revel in being a hissing, menacing presence when he is questioned, when his deceptions on the natural resources sector are exposed before the nation. Civil society in its widest representation comes in for the worst kinds of abuse and beating down by a leader who was a president for over a decade. He is the champion abuser, reviler, and denigrator, who seemingly eggs on his followers. The only thing that matters to the government is that it is allowed to have its way, regardless of how potentially unsafe (or uneconomical) it could be for the Guyanese public. The Wales gas-to-energy project is only one. The secrecies surrounding projects and spending are others. When government is the chief abuser, then citizens are the biggest sufferers, and the country the worst loser.

Elizabeth Deane-Hughes, Karen de Souza, PPPC Governments, t Danuta Radzik, Vanda Radzik

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Slurs and slanders

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