Besieged

Aug 15, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyana’s major institutions are under siege at the hands of the PPP/C Government that is firmly focused on a vision of total control. One public institution after another has surrendered their independence, are no longer seen as neutral as they should be.

The PPP/C Government juggernaut moves with the confidence of an irresistible force. The result has been that many constitutional bulwarks have been rolled around like dice in the hands of the government, the craven will of its leaders. Recently, the judiciary has come under attack from government sources, with it being the latest constitutional protective plank targeted in an environment that teeters on the borders of a nuanced dictatorship.

Among Guyana’s public institutions wounded by the manipulations of a calculating PPP/C Government, the Guyana Police Force stands out starkly. The Force has been politicized and weaponized to jump to the bidding of government leaders. Leaders are versed in saying the right things in public but implement the opposite behind the scenes. The Force is compromise and demoralized to the detriment of Guyanese interests. In the usual manner of insecure politicians, those with a fetish for control, a Force that is professional and untouchable, is seen as a threat. One that takes its duties seriously and uncompromisingly instils fear in a government that recommends itself as clean, but which is weighed down by an endless litany of corruption. From perceptions to practices, this is the reality of the Force in Guyana, and this is not good for any Guyanese.

The Environmental Protective Agency (EPA) has fallen under the suffocating grip of a sellout PPP/C Government, with ExxonMobil (and other downstream operators in the oil sector) setting their own standards and being allowed to get away with those. One government leader is always seeking to reassure Guyanese with repeated references to “technical people.” He gives the impression that the EPA knows what it is doing, is in full charge of the oil companies and those that support them. The reality is that the local EPA has been gutted and hobbled by the determined actions of a PPP/C Government that is more for the foreign companies than it is for the Guyanese owners of the national oil wealth. The EPA doesn’t have a good supply of the quality technical people that it needs, which has reduced it to a pawn in the hands of the foreign oil companies and their onshore vendors. This seems to be the overall thrust of government’s objectives; and it is what forms part of the games and smokescreens of national leaders. Speak sweetly in public, besiege the EPA to a state of weakness, which means helplessness.

To restate the obvious, there is something about the media that has driven to distraction one PPPC Government after another. Because it has so many secrets that must remain hidden, the government’s top people fear a free and independent media. To limit its exposure the government has full control over State media in all its forms and has cultivated private media sources committed to looking the other way, asking no tough questions. In contrast, PPPC Government leaders show their real side when they attack, abuse, and seek to crush independent media house, their journalists, and their other contributors. What honest government, which principled national decisionmakers, lives in such conditions of perpetual dread? A government that conducts the business of the people cleanly should welcome an independent and vibrant media as an asset, if not as a partner that helps to get the best for Guyanese. Unfortunately, this has not been the experience of Guyana’s independent media.

Lately, the judiciary, like the independent media, one that is not totally overpowered and dominated by the PPPC Government, has come under attack. Justices Sandil Kissoon and Gino Persaud have incurred the wrath of an impatient and hostile government unhappy with their rulings. Then, a magistrate felt some government heat in the ongoing elections fraud case. Cumulatively, public institutions are besieged, with the PPPC Government intensifying its efforts to strip them of any independence they have. This is to the discredit of a government that delights talking about democracy, but has lost touched with democracy’s values, the ways in which a genuine democracy functions.

Editorial, Government, institutions, PPP/C, vision

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