Pull the visas of these anti-democratic officials

Dear Editor,  
I join Peeping Tom (KN 10/13/14) in calling, through their ambassadors, on the governments of America, Britain, and Canada ( the ABC countries), to pull the visas of all Guyanese officials that are engaged in the trampling of democracy and its underpinnings in Guyana.
Honorable Ambassadors, when the PNC ruled Guyana, the then-opposition PPP made many trips to your countries and pleaded with your governments to impose economic sanctions on all of Guyana to pressure the PNC to hold free and fair elections. I plead only for visa sanctions to be imposed upon the offending officials and their family members, for it is wrong to make all Guyanese suffer for the repugnant actions of identifiable anti-democratic officials.
Honorable Ambassadors, I am well aware of the high regard with which the press is held in your respective countries. I am also aware of your countries’ unyielding belief in the right of the press to be free, whenever or wherever the press yearns to be free, because a free press is to democracy what a steering wheel is to a car.
Being close followers of our politics, Honorable Ambassadors, I am sure that you are all aware of the persistent attacks the Guyana media have been subjected to by elected and appointed Guyana government officials of various ranks and temperaments, and for reasons that are clearly political, imagined, or contrived. But though these reasons for attacking the media are absurd, they have had frightening repercussions upon the media in Guyana.
One of our nation’s two major dailies has practically stopped carrying investigative reports on government corruption, and recently exposed e-mail correspondence among some current and former government officials which boasted of the effective control of the subject-matter choice of one of our nation’s most popular newspaper columnists and of an upcoming witch-hunt audit that should presumably have the same effect on our nation’s most-widely circulated newspaper for which he writes.
Honorable Ambassadors, a wait-and-see attitude is no longer an option, for the enemies of press freedom are desperate and impatient. The owner of Kaieteur News and his wife have been placed before our courts on charges that are even more trivial than the reasons often offered for attacking the freedom of our press. But whatever the merits of those charges and their eventual outcome, local political observers, from the man in the street to the crowd in the penthouse, are well aware that the eventual closure of Kaieteur News is the real objective.
In addition to their assault on press freedom, identifiable government officials have been refusing to abide by the decisions of our courts and the provisions of our constitution. They have refused to hold constitutionally mandated elections or appoint constitutionally-mandated commissions. They have also refused to accept the results of our 2011 elections,  demonstrating their disdain for the electorate by refusing to abide by the decisions of our National Assembly.
Honorable Ambassadors, less than two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the PNC was forced to hold free and fair elections. It has been three years since our elections in 2011 and the final collapse of any pretense that democracy was returned to my country twenty-two years ago. And it has also been  three years since the PPP and its various appointed and elected officials have been making it unambiguously clear that they have no use for democracy and its traditions. Those three years, Honorable Ambassadors, have been one more than the PNC was given to abide by the traditions of democracy. So you must act now.
For the good of my country and the continued high regard in which your countries are held for their consistent commitment to press freedom and democracy, I again urge you to recommend that your governments immediately revoke the the visas of all anti-democratic officials and their family members. Guyanese will provide you with their names.
Lionel Lowe