Last week was not a good week for freedom of expression in this country. It was also not a good week for the norms of civilized behaviour, for the rule of law or for any small hope we might have been nurturing of creating a truly open society. First it was the attack on Mr Freddie Kissoon, the Kaieteur News columnist, and then the horrendous acid attack on Mr Pretipaul Jaigobin, the Assistant Treasurer of the Guyana Cricket Board, who is convinced he was made a target because of his outspokenness in relation to irregularities at the board. This was all quite apart from the usual ‘executions’ plus a grenade attack and a channa bomb attack on the separate premises of private individuals.
Any democracy operates on the presumption that citizens have a right to express themselves in the public arena – provided they do not descend to hate-filled or inciteful speech, and operate with due regard for the laws of libel and slander. It could not be otherwise. If people go in fear of expressing their views, then they are living in a closed society of one authoritarian stripe or another, not in a free one. So this government, which never tires of telling us how they are “deepening democracy” should take note: their prized ‘democracy’ is inexorably slipping away from their grasp.
In a fractured society such as ours, where there has been increasing polarization of the ethnic groups and the concomitant stereotyping by some which inevitably goes along with this, it is difficult to achieve civil, meaningful exchanges. But however intemperate the tone of what is said and however inaccurate its substance, the speaker should never be silenced by threats, let alone by physical assaults; to do so, as said above, is to move the entire society and not just the victim into an entirely different political dimension. Once there is fear, everyone from government ministers, to officials, to politicians, to administrators in the non-state sector, to ordinary citizens will be silenced. And it really doesn’t matter who was targeted in the first instance; the consequences will affect everyone, no matter which side of a divide they stand and no matter what their views.
Public debate here is frequently not conducted within the confines of rational discourse, where people really listen to one another and respond to points raised. More often than not, the language is extreme and ad hominem attacks are substituted for arguments. In our circumstances, needless to say, this is not just unhelpful in facilitating genuine dialogue, it raises the temperature unnecessarily. No matter what the verbal provocation, one would expect a sitting government at least to set the example of restraint. Apart from anything else, it is answerable to the populus, and must not only accept that criticism goes with the turf, but that not all the criticism to which it will be subject will necessarily be fair. Unfortunately, the administration has shown itself extremely sensitive to criticism, as well as utterly resistant to entertaining other points of view and inordinately prone to heaping derision on its critics.
In most other countries, heads of state try to stand above the fray and let ministers answer those who have expressed opinions adverse to the government – or if they do respond, they do so in guarded and fastidious terms. Not so in Guyana, where the President makes a habit of abusing those with whom he disagrees. This kind of immoderate speech from the nation’s premier citizen sends a message – undoubtedly unintended – down through the society, and makes its contribution to an atmosphere where ‘busing down’ whoever is in disagreement with one becomes the preferred mode of proceeding rather than debating the issues.
Of course, one of the underlying factors making possible the incidents last week is the general breakdown of law and order. There is a culture of impunity at all levels in the society, and those who made their assault on free speech felt secure in the knowledge that it was unlikely they would be caught. Had they thought there was a good chance they would be apprehended, then whether or not the public debate was turbulent or unrestrained, they would have been less likely to take the risk of doing what they did.
As has been said several times before, in a country which is no longer rule-governed, all kinds of aberrations come to the fore. And this is not, any more, a fully rule-governed society in the accepted sense of that term. True democracy cannot function in such an environment, since it presupposes a measure of security for citizens to go about their daily business without fear, speak their minds without consequences and operate with the general confidence that the law is there not just to protect them in theory, but also in practice.
What kind of democracy are we talking about if a conscientious official who is asking questions about financial improprieties in a key organization has acid thrown on him by an attacker who seems to have been hired by someone else? This is the rule of law under siege from those who want to see illegality triumph. If the police force cannot catch the perpetrators in these cases, then the government should stop belabouring us with the great democratic breakthrough of 1992, for with each passing incident, the forces of darkness score yet another victory over the forces of democracy.
