Fresh ideas and innovative thinking create the kind of foundation for progress to happen.
Any society that stifles the free flow of new ideas and original thought suffocates its own progress and development, and robs citizens of a fundamental democratic right.
This nation could boast of two positives: consistent macro-economic growth over the past five years, and relatively free and fair national elections every five years for the past two decades.
Yet, the nation’s advance seems so stymied, so sluggish and stagnant.
This column started a series last week looking at the nation through the metaphor of a human body. So we’ll look at the Guyanese ‘body politic’ over the next few columns.
Last week’s column asserted that the body politic suffers from a soul that rots, with the political leaders unable to motivate the citizens to build an inspiring Guyana Dream.
The soul of the body politic rots because of a number of ailments afflicting the national body. The most glaring is the decade-old strangulation of the State voice, denying citizens their fundamental right to carry on a national conversation.
People turn to this independent daily newspaper, the Stabroek News, for credible information and a decent place to converse among themselves. The letter columns have always been popular, since the launch of the newspaper.
Several private TV stations operate, but these lack international standards of broadcasting. Except for the veteran newsman Enrico Woolford, the offering on local TV is most pathetic.
Internet media is now beginning to assert some influence, with all the newspapers playing a serious role, along with a couple of news sites.
Although the nation now houses four daily newspapers, citizens rely for credible and sensible information on the Stabroek News, which continues to play a vibrant and dynamic role in national affairs.
The other newspapers tend to become sensationalist or biased, lacking the professionalism that national media demand.
National radio continues to be a disgrace. Not only have standards of radio broadcasts declined terribly, except for a very few broadcasters from the old days, but the tight-fisted State control and monopoly continues, 20 years after the ruling party promised citizens it would end the monopoly.
An even bigger disgrace is the Government’s hold on the national newspaper, the Guyana Chronicle.
Government information bureaucrats and the Cabinet of Ministers seem blunted in their conscience about this denial of citizens to access their own newspaper.
The Chronicle gets the bulk of its funding from the Government. In fact, the entire State media machinery, including the TV station run by NCN, the radio station, and the Chronicle all receive funding from taxpayers’ dollars.
Yet, the ones who pay for these entities to operate cannot access them. This is morally wrong, and ethically disgraceful.
And Government leaders slumber in the face of this denial of a fundamental democratic right to the citizens of this land.
Prime Minister Sam Hinds, President Donald Ramotar and all the Ministers remain silent about this, as if their conscience is okay with such a grossly undemocratic practice.
In Britain, the role of the State-owned British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) secures the democracy of that nation. British citizens could easily access the BBC. The citizens of the land have a voice.
The British body politic, through the BBC, has developed a global voice where ideas, a global conversation and thinking take place. The British society reaps multitudes of benefits from this intangible asset.
In Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) performs just such a role. It is an open secret that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government do not like the liberal CBC. But the Government remains hands-off, continues to fund the national media, and allows citizens to exercise their voice. The CBC nurtures a national Canadian conversation that is second to none, out of the multitudes of private media in the country.
Canada reaps enormous rewards from allowing citizens to share ideas, hold conversations and participate in national governance through the State-owned CBC.
In the United States we see the Voice of America performing this role, engineering global conversations about American values, and giving Americans access to a global forum through which they could influence the world, and their society.
Here in Guyana, for upwards of three decades, the Government, which pontificates that it serves the people, stubbornly denies the people their own voice.
With a new dynamic in Parliament, the majority Opposition may work to enact legislation to ensure the State media is opened up. One hopes. This topic has not yet come up in the conversation of the new Parliamentary dynamic. But it is a fundamental democratic right of every citizen of this land to access the State media.
Both the main political parties in this country have consistently stifled the people’s voice, denying them the right to nurture national conversations, to share ideas and to participate in their society’s governance.
One hopes that the new enlightened thinking in Parliament would sway this monster off the backs of the Guyanese people.
Some political leaders during the elections campaign talked of privatizing the State media. We cannot do that. Our society would do well with a professional State media.
In fact, every developed society nurtures a professional State media operation.
There is enough private media already.
All that has to be done is for the Government to take its bureaucratic dictatorial hands off the State media, and allow independent professionals to build national conversations, and enable citizens to participate in the governance of their land through exercising their national voice.
Those who stifle the State media with almost inhumane lack of good conscience say Guyanese democracy is alive and well because of free and fair national elections.
But the body politic cannot be that lopsided, lacking a voice as if it’s dumb. Free and fair elections work only if the voters are well informed, if citizens are allowed to exercise their voice in governance matters after the elections, and if there is a consistent flow of conversations, ideas, information and thinking across the landscape of the society.
Unless the Government is held accountable to open up the State media, soon, fresh ideas and original thinking cannot flow across the society, and progress and development would remain elusive.
email: beingshaun@gmail.com
web: thequalpedlife.com
