One is left to wonder who it is that is writing the press releases in Freedom House. Their most recent statements not only bear little relationship to reality, but are also fatuous and foolhardy, not to mention downright dangerous. Now it is true that their latest excursions into the realms of dark fantasy were triggered by some impolitic remarks by Leader of the Opposition David Granger that were reported in our newspaper on November 18. He told the SN reporter that people who had been alleged to have committed illegal or criminal acts would be punished, and that where an inclusive government was concerned, “There is no prospect of sitting around the table with criminals.” This was after he had said that Mr Jagdeo would be moved far away from government because his influence was not good, and he had drawn attention to Minister Ashni Singh’s serious infractions in relation to expenditure not approved by Parliament.
Now all of this is rather silly and hardly requires an airing at this time and in these circumstances, more particularly in the context of a discussion relating to a national unity government. There is no point in pre-empting any negotiations – supposing for the sake of argument that a situation making these possible materialized – by spelling out who will and who will not be part of such a government.
Again, for the sake of argument, if APNU did win an outright majority – which is highly unlikely – or even a plurality, which is also not a given, Mr Granger would not be able to pick and choose whom he wanted from the other parties and call it a unity government; he would be dealing not with individuals for the most part, but with parties, and the composition of any administration would have to be agreed at that level. In any case, it should go without saying that anyone guilty of a criminal offence should be charged (not punished), and that in a new climate of governance the law would be applied equally and fairly with due process observed.
But when Mr Granger adopted a puritanical posture, with his eye focused on the incumbent regime rather than politicians, bureaucrats and their associates in general, the PPP went into panic mode. They construed it as a threat against themselves personally, and decided the Leader of the Opposition intended to go on a witch hunt if he ever came into office.
Mr Granger’s imprudent comments, which could quite safely have been ignored as unworthy of a response, or at least dealt with at a very low-key level, precipitated instead a hysterical outburst. ‘Granger ready to make the Demerara River run red with blood if he is elected President,’ blared the headline of the subsequent PPP release. One was only left to wonder if the denizens of Freedom House were suffering from a rare psychological disorder whereby they believed themselves displaced and living in Syria or some other such benighted country, rather than in Guyana.
Of course, it does seem as if some at least of the senior members of the PPP have been locked up within the walls of their mental prison for so long they have severed all ties with the real world, and now inhabit their own imaginary universe. The public, for example, was treated to references to Mr Granger’s “lynch mob,” Messrs Granger and Greenidge’s whipping up of “xenophobic hysteria,” and their intentions to “unleash vengeance against anyone they perceive to be associated with the PPP and the PPP/C administration.” Warming to their topic, the anonymous authors of this strange document alluded to the “serious threats” issued by the two to “Indian and Chinese businesses in an effort to frighten investors.”
It seems hardly necessary to say that all of this was arrant nonsense with no foundation in the truth. It appears as though when the shadowy PPP mandarins can’t find anything to fit in their frame of political ‘reality’ as they would like it to be, they simply make things up. And they did not stop there. Nothing daunted, they proceeded to issue a follow-up statement which corresponded to a template created initially by former President Bharrat Jagdeo, to wit, the PNC is “in bed with the criminal underworld.” Again, they did not let the facts get in the way of what they perceived would be a good story, and so Linden ‘Blackie’ London suddenly became the man who escaped from the Camp Street prison on “February 23, 2003” [sic] and Mr Granger just as suddenly “was photographed in the company of gun-toting bandit Kevin Fields, during the funeral of a criminal killed by police.”
Mr Granger did go to the trouble of pointing out that he was not in “the company” of the above-mentioned “gun-toting” bandit as such, while even the man in the street knows that ‘Blackie’ was dead before the Camp Street jail breakout; however, as already indicated the PPP hierarchy is not concerned with the facts, and once they have written something, they seek to treat it as gospel.
The outrageous over-reaction on this occasion is in need of some explanation. Freedom House is under enormous pressure: the gap between their previous self-image and the reality is growing ever greater, and they have lost any moral advantage they once thought they had. Given the accusations of pervasive corruption in all its forms swirling around them and the number of scandals they face involving certain senior members of government, how can they hold themselves up as a shining light in comparison to the PNC? What they are doing, therefore, is to depict the latter party as so depraved as to be bracketed in terms of their methods, with extremist groups outside this country, so the PPP can still look lustrous. It is a folorn hope.
Certainly the racial implications of all this were not lost on APNU, which rightly accused the PPP of “fan[ning] the flames of ethnic insecurity and racial fear.” This is not something new to the ruling party, of course, at least in their bottom house encounters, but we have never had anything quite like their first release in the public domain before — a release which by any standards bespeaks ignorance, blundering and malevolence. At the very least, it appears to be a reaction born of utter desperation and complete confusion about what they should do next. Like someone cornered, therefore, they strike out in frenzied fashion at the only target that is familiar to them, and behave totally irrationally.
In addition to that we have those who actually composed this utter codswallop, and who seem to be incapable of coherence let alone reasoned thought. Even propaganda requires at a minimum, a measure of correspondence to reality, otherwise it will simply be dismissed out of hand – as this recent offering has been. Where the writing of press releases is concerned, the PPP surely needs to find itself a far more competent and sagacious propagandist, otherwise everyone will be convinced that Freedom House is living in a fictional world of its own creation, not in the here and now. And a fictional world spewing out any number of make-believe press releases will not make possible escape from the here and now of no elections and a prorogued Parliament.
