Dear Editor,
There were three major revelations this week as the casino gambling debacle unfolded.
The first was the obvious effort by Stabroek News to carry as balanced a report as possible on the issues unfolding inside and outside of Parliament, and their middle-page spreads on January 11 and 12 were as much a testimony of good reporting as it was of the surprising degree of latitude given by SN’s Editor to reporters Miranda La Rose, Keisha McCammon and Andre Haynes.
The second was the stark contrast provided by the statesmanship and awareness of Sheila Holder against the noticeably vindictive opportunism of ministers Clement Rohee and Desrey Fox. The former translated a statement at a press conference of January 10 that the Christian Community would do “anything within the bounds of Christian conduct” to mean that they had become “a threat to national security.” This would be laughable were it not, as Holder opined, “predictable.”
Mr. Rohee mischaracterized the Christian position as carefully outlined in (i) press releases to seven media houses, (ii) a sixteen-page document on the Church’s rationale for its position, also delivered to seven media houses, and (iii) a six-page Private Petition to the entire House, with an odd mixture of utterances that demand further scrutiny. He seemed completely oblivious to the fact that he alone shared these opinions in parliamentary session, or that he saw “demons” where the media saw none. Christians focused on the evidence, while Mr. Rohee offered none. This is unacceptable and disingenuous.
Mr. Rohee is challenged to show a single word and sentence in these submissions that hinted at a “security threat”, or that represented an occasion where the Minister was justified in acting or speaking the way he did.
Mr. Rohee himself, like the Prime Minister, is challenged to show a single “theological” or “doctrinal” point in any of the submissions by the church to Guyana’s Parliamentarians. If they cannot, then they owe an apology to 57% of the population. Neither of them, quite frankly, appears capable of that simple task.
But perhaps the level of Mr. Rohee’s imagination can only be appreciated by his careful omission of the fact that the Christian community had circumspectly submitted to the Guyana Police Force several days in advance a request for permission to congregate in peaceful protest at Parliament Buildings, and that its Draft Position Paper was submitted to the Guyana Police for scrutiny after request. It apparently passed with flying colours, but Mr. Rohee envisaged barricades as the dramatically appropriate response. It was outlandish and inconsiderate, and spanks of an immaturity that ought not to reside in the office of Minister of Home Affairs.
The Final Position Paper is still available for the general public by writing Guyana Evangelical@ Yahoo.com.
The final development was the fact that it was the Christian community alone, albeit with spirited verbal support from Muslims, which sought to develop a new standard of democratic interaction with Parliament by being brave enough to document, defend and circulate to all concerned the enormity of the social experiment that is being played out in Guyana through the potential of thirty (yes thirty) casinos, since the Bill accommodates up to three per administrative region
