First it was AG, now it’s the VP

Sep 03, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Attorney General Anil Nandlall got in the first shot. Pro-PPP letter writers are not given a fair shake by SN.  But others are, starting with me.

This is Guyana’s honorable attorney general, someone who should be driven by balance, substance, and an abundance of fairness.  But he is AG Nandlall.  Apparently, the demands of his busier-than-a-bee office made it slide past him that the paper of the people, the Guyana Chronicle is booby-trapped territory for conscientious Guyanese with a comment or position to share.  If it is not offensive to Mr. Nandlall’s delicate sensibilities, people like me are blocked, banned, and barred from the paper that we pay to upkeep.  Worse yet, it has again conveniently eluded Mr. Nandlall’s grasp that the same Guyana Chronicle (the people’s paper) is being used to malign people found objectionable.  Mr. Nandlall is nothing, if not an honorable man.  I mean that, with salt or lime.  So, while he exercises his right and voices his ire about the bias in the independent media, in that instance SN, apparently one of his feet is shorter than the other.  To wit, it does not allow him to reach as quickly, as sweepingly, and as powerfully into the arena where the PPP has total control.  The PPP Government has exhibited its complete dominance (editorial control) over what goes in and what comes out of the Chronicle, and AG Nandlall has no qualms at all.  But not content with that, he seeks to extend that prerogative to a presence in the independent media, SN.

Truth be told, the AG, like the VP, is not satisfied that nobody reads the Chronicle, not even those in the government offices who are compelled to buy it.  Even more embarrassingly, not even when orders have been passed that the Kaieteur News and (maybe) Stabroek News are not to be bought, not to be seen, around government offices.  Because the state media has no credibility, and is seen as questionable in its integrity, even PPP loyalists are disgusted with the product.  So when AG Nandlall fired up his slingshots, I knew that it was just a matter of time and the right moment before the mighty VP (better make that almighty VP just to stay on his good side) to get into the act and deliver his broadside and fusillade at the independent media.  The indigenous conference in GT gave Dr. Jagdeo the opening he craved.

‘Unfair media coverage’ is the cry from VP Jagdeo. What could be more unfair, more slanted, more biased Dr. Jagdeo than the State media?  I know, could see, that Bharrat Jagdeo is aging.  But am confident that he has not reached the age of senility yet.  He may pretend to be deranged and schizoid and senile, but he is not anywhere near those three stages at this point.  To repeat, taxpayers’ money is being misused to malign dissenting taxpayers, with no allowance for the right to self-defense, or to have any say at all, but Jagdeo is the saintly man rattling around about what is ‘unfair.’  According to the State media, the indigenous has no issues.  From the lips of the Indigenous themselves, they have serious concerns, and there are many, that demand ventilation. Since both the AG and VP are blind to the bias of the Chronicle but are enmeshed in democracy’s ideals, it is perplexing that they have a problem with the independent media.  Perhaps, they got carried away and lost their bearings for a bit.  I would be the last Guyanese to endorse the belief that Dr. Nandlall and Dr. Jagdeo position is that all Guyanese should think alike, speak alike, and sound alike.  I could be mistaken, but Excellency Ali may be thinking along those exact lines with his One Guyana contraption. It is where all Guyanese look alike.  Jagdeo and Nandlall fight to ensure that they speak alike, and Ali through a combination of pressure, parsing out, and constant pounding pushes out the undesirables (uncooperative) so that there is his One Guyana man who mumbles, bumbles, and hobbles alike. One size fits all, and all Guyanese look like they were made from the same clay and mold.

In such a media environment, a virtual politicians’ paradise, there is neither secrecy nor roguery nor skullduggery with oil.  There is no corruption in the bidding-tender board evaluation award process.  There is neither chronic concern nor palpable fear about the operations of the Guyana Police Force.  Teachers and public servants and Amerindians are all thankful beyond words for the unmatched care, generosity, and respect received from the PPP Government, with Big Bosses Ali and Jagdeo men of angelic aura. If Dr. Anil Nandlall, SC, MP, JP, AA, OE, is half the citizen that I think he is, such a faked reality would make him grow green in the tonsils, and sick to his stomach.  Because he knows the facts and the truth, he knows differently.  Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, on the other hand, only knows one thing: total control.

The unchallengeable supremacy of the cult leader. Jagdeo knows a politician’s truths, which has a rather spongy consistency.  He knows and wishes for, a situation of no dissenting citizenship.  He battles for a condition of no contrarian positions, or opinions.  He is for all the positives from the indigenous conference, as if the State media left out anything, or gave the happenings less than the most positive spin, less than glittering treatment.

I think that this fact must be faced.  Jagdeo is very jittery, very much of a skeletal political apparition (think closets and holes) that he fears shadows, and dreads exposure.  Thus: if the independent media gave him what he so ardently craves (no unpleasant facts of PPP life), he still would be weeping and gnashing his teeth.  For, if there was only one public commentator or deviationist social media contributor left in all Guyana, he would be psychologically crippled, emotionally distraught, mentally sacred out of his wits.  I told him before: be fair, and live without media fear.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• Attorney General, GHK Lall, Guyana’s, honorable, Nandlall

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