May 27 2019
Dear Editor,
I must say that it took me a while to appreciate the full extent of the PPP’s skills in many dubious fields. In one particular arena it is extraordinarily gifted. It comes from long practice.
I have to applaud the opposition and its leading people for the concerted and relentless attempts and successes at media management. There is volume (an ex-president, an ex-PS, an ex-presidential aspirant, and an ex-brawler, among the more recognizable, visible, and audible). They are everywhere: Stabroek, Kaieteur, and Demerara; I suspect that they make steady appearances, in turns, in the other Guyana(s) and local small screen channels, which I do not watch. It is this continuous stream of rebranded messages, which would put the old Tass News Agency and Izvestia to shame. When I look around at the far reach and heavy lifting of the PPP apparatchiks, I realize this is the embodiment of Pravda on a national rampage.
It is of propagandists taking the purpose and power of propaganda to new levels through new and newer dimensions at work. These comrades are good. I wish they were as good at the things that matter: clean governance, plain truth, and straight character. The government has no equivalent, no standing; can’t hold a matchstick before the fearsome hurricane that extinguishes its own feeble, flickering efforts at delivering a counterattack of some robustness. The government languishes; it loses. Daily.
There are no limits to the forbidden and dangerous territories into which the PPP powers will not venture. They operate by a simple mantra: there is no such thing as bad publicity. Thus, let ‘em have it: sock it to them. On the nose; in the gut; and, as is usual, lower down the line, too. As an example of this reckless disregard, the PPP is macho enough to intrude in, of all places and things, corruption. It takes that albatross that darkened its recent history, that Achilles heel which hobbled it in 2015 and, lo and behold, it as though that shabby record never existed. They have transformed (somehow) themselves and group into the archbishops of anti-corruption. It is worth noting that they were inestimably helped by an unwisely lethargic and imitating government.
What a turnaround! What daring and bravado! What wisecrackers! But for what purpose? As that American College football lion, Red Saunders of UCLA fame, did pronounce (No! it is not Vince Lombardi): “Winning isn’t everything; it is the only thing.” In the world of Guyanese politics generally, and the PPP in particular, the means do not matter. It is all about the ends. And that is about winning. The party’s publicity machine is not only an unmatched machine. It is also a mighty mean one, too.
The truth is twisted. The past is resurrected and refurbished, and then extolled through endless excesses with distortions and subterfuges. Of necessity, such activities are nuanced or flagrant, as circumstances dictate, and the targeted audiences anticipate. Give the people what they want. It never fails. It is a good living, and make people forget their grievances, the pains and disappointments of a now forgotten era lost in the dustbin of history, and now overwhelmed by the silken sheen of the talking heads of the present. Four years can make a lot of people forget a lot of things. None of them good.
Rather memorably and incredibly, men remake themselves from pariahs to pundits. Overnight, too. This is Guyana. They have become parsons preaching soothing messages of good tidings for faithful believers (50,000 jobs); baptism and the redemption of deliverance (anti-corruption); and the salvation that comes from a hoped-for second chance through exhibitions of being born again (religious revivalism, political style) Count me as an unbeliever. I have seen the light.
In the opposition ranks, there is even a man of the cloth (it is not of camel’s hair), who is part of the local political apocrypha. Anything for the party, including rendering to Caesar everything, especially soul. Got to get the message across. Forget about holy water. Oil and power and secular ambitions will make men bend knee before the promises of men with provocative messages for other men. All of this emphasizes that this society has been blessed (or damned) by original frauds, and counterfeit sachems, political foragers all.
What a message it has been and promises to be.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall