The neo-liberal Marxists of Freedom House

Oct 22, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – You have to hand it to the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPPC). Only they could achieve what Karl Marx could never dream of: a government that preaches neoliberalism by day and practices totalitarian information control by night.

It’s like a vegan who secretly runs a steakhouse. The party’s constitution has been scrubbed clean of Marxism-Leninism, but the spirit of the Politburo still lingers like garlic on your breath. You may think it’s gone, but everyone else can smell it. These days, the PPPC boasts of being pro-business, pro-growth, pro-investment, and pro-anything that comes with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and foreign financing. They’re the kind of capitalists who quote Adam Smith at breakfast, but still have Lenin whispering sweet nothings in their ear by lunch. You can see the confusion. The party’s ideology has moved from the “workers of the world unite” to “capitalists of the world, unite and enjoy our tax holidays.”

But when it comes to the free flow of information, well, let’s just say the PPPC prefers that information flow through a tap it can control, preferably with a lock and a guard. The government’s idea of freedom of expression is that everyone is free to express the government’s opinion.

Take, for instance, the case of that fellow who used to deliver weekly commentaries on a private TV newscast decades ago. His sin? He spoke his mind. His punishment? The PPPC did what any self-respecting democratic government would never do, it went straight for the jugular: the sponsor of the newscast on which the commentaries were aired. A major department store was politely encouraged (read: pressured with the subtlety of a sledgehammer) to pull its advertisements. Nothing says “we support a free press” like threatening to bankrupt it.

The PPPC has a long and colourful history of using state advertisements as both carrot and cudgel. When Stabroek News stood in the way of ‘a new kid on the block’ the government yanked its ads faster in order to put the newspaper out of business and pave the way for the newcomer. It came as no surprise that when the new newspaper was launched, one rumoured to be more congenial to the government’s sensitivities, low and behold, the ad faucet flowed once again. Coincidence? Only if you believe Santa Claus doubles as a procurement officer.

Kaieteur News, meanwhile, received not a single government ad in its first decade of existence. Ten years! In Guyanese politics, that’s longer than most campaign promises last. The reason? Its publisher refused to fire an editor the PPPC found inconvenient. When the government later pulled ads again, the publisher didn’t grovel. He simply raised the price of the paper by $20. The PPPC, one suspects, was deeply offended by this entrepreneurial defiance. It’s one thing to silence dissent; it’s another to have your censorship turned into a business opportunity.

Party officials, bless their candor, have even gone on record calling for a boycott of the Kaieteur News. Apparently, it’s not enough to disagree with your critics. You have to economically annihilate them. Somewhere, Orwell is taking notes for the sequel to 1984: 2025 — The Guyana Edition. Not so long ago, the threat of withholding state advertisements against this newspaper was resurrected. It was made clear that as long as the publisher formed a political party, the paper automatically become a political newspaper and ads would be limited.

But let’s not get stuck on the advertisements. That’s merely the symptom. The disease is the PPPC’s obsession with control. It’s not enough to dominate the media; it wants to suffocate dissent, to mould the national mind into one uniform, smiling face that says: “Yes, Comrade — sorry, Minister.” In their zeal, they’re not out to imitate Cheddi Jagan anymore; they’re out to outdo Burnham.

This is not about ideology anymore. It’s about instinct — that deep, unshakable need to supervise thought, to ensure that no one strays from the official hymn sheet. The PPPC’s relationship with free expression is like a controlling spouse who swears they “trust” you but still checks your phone every night. And yet, paradoxically, the same party will proudly tell the world it has modernized, liberalized, and digitized the economy. They’ve embraced capitalism, all right — just not the part where people get to speak freely about it. It’s as if they’ve installed Wi-Fi in every village but blocked Google, YouTube, and anything remotely resembling a critical thought.

In today’s Guyana, information doesn’t flow. It trickles, and only when the right valve is turned. The tragedy here isn’t just political; it’s existential. A society that can’t criticize its rulers eventually forgets how to think for itself. That’s how nations grow compliant — not through fear, but through fatigue. When the people stop expecting honesty, governments stop bothering to fake it.

So, the Guyanese people face a choice, and it’s not between socialism and capitalism anymore. It’s between free expression and managed obedience. Between a country that argues with itself and one that parrots the party line. Between the risk of chaos and the certainty of control. Freedom of speech is messy, inconvenient, and often unprofitable. But without it, all that remains is propaganda and a government applauding its own echoes. If the PPPC truly wants to prove it has evolved beyond its Marxist-Leninist shadow, it should start by loosening its grip on information. Until then, it will remain the world’s strangest ideological hybrid—a capitalist economy run by Marxist instincts. And that, dear reader, is the most terrifying political experiment of all. Because it’s working.

(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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• Freedom House, Karl Marx, neo-liberal Marxists, Peeping Tom, People’s Progressive Party Civic, PPPC

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