Works and Hydraulics Minister Robeson Benn would have significantly enhanced his already considerable reputation as a lightning rod for controversy by taking his objection to the lyrics of the winning calypso directly to the studios of the National Communications Network (NCN) and, it seemed, triggering a chain reaction that led to the removal of the entire clutch of Mashramani 2013 calypsos from the state-run radio station.
A handful of public figures including calypsonians and other social commentators have voiced their public disapproval of the development. The nation as a whole, however, has hardly batted an eyelid. It may well be, that having grown accustomed to the familiar behaviour of a political administration for which intolerance of public criticism has now become second nature, the populace as a whole may have decided that, in this instance, vigorous protest was simply a waste of time.
One of the few public comments on the issue from political figures came from Alliance for Change Member of Parliament Cathy Hughes, who chose to describe the occurrence as an act of “culturecide” though many other people appeared to treat Mr Benn’s protest and the subsequent removal of the calypsos from NCN as unpardonable acts of insensitivity to the role of calypso in Caribbean society.
One might have thought that any Caribbean cabinet minister worth his salt would be aware of the considerable legitimacy of the calypso as a medium for the expression of social and political views and as one of the accepted cultural media through which we take the liberty of ridiculing ourselves. Criticism through calypso has embraced broad appeals against inequality, racism, poverty and oppression, and has even ventured into areas of domestic policy, legislation, and the behaviour of public officials, so that in a sense Mr Benn’s demarche on NCN in protest against what he regarded as an offending calypso bespeaks his apparent insensitivity to this reality. Some might even accuse him of an embarrassing lack of awareness of the role which this particular genre of music has played in Guyanese and Caribbean society.
What concerned Mr Benn much more (and he said so) was the fact that the winning calypso was being aired on the “government’s” radio station, an altogether ludicrous statement since – as Mr Benn must surely know – it is the state and not the government that actually owns the station. That, it seems is simply another way of saying that state-run media houses are off-limits to pronouncements that are critical of government.
It would probably have come as a major surprise if Mr Benn had seen the error of his ways and quietly let the matter ride. He chose instead to use other sections of the media to insist on his right as a citizen to voice his objection to the ‘offending’ calypso. That would have come across to the public as an outrageously cynical utterance since it was patently obvious that it was Mr Benn’s authority as a Minister of Government that would have gotten him a hearing at NCN in the first place. Which amongst the less well-appointed citizens who might have felt similarly offended would have chosen to employ that particular form of protest, knowing only too well that they were risking immediate eviction – or perhaps worse – from the premises of NCN. Mr Benn undertook his protest knowing that his ministerial status would get him a measure of attention − which he got. What appears not to have occurred to him at the time was that once his decision to directly engage NCN had come to public attention, it would have been interpreted as an unjustified official attempt to suppress the public airing of a calypso that had offended the administration, which is exactly what happened and which is precisely why he subsequently rushed to the media to protest his innocence over the banning of the calypsos.
In the end he was forced into an exercise that resembled a measure of back-pedalling, denying that it was his intervention that had triggered the removal of the calypsos from the airwaves though he knows full well that the calypsos would, in all likelihood, have been left to run their seasonal course had he not opted for his clumsy intrusion, which, ironically, will linger in the public memory long after this year’s Mashramani calypso offerings have passed and gone.
