The coming of a new dispensation

DEAR EDITOR,
I am in the unfortunate circumstance of having to watch E-Networks for my television service because I live in an area that has no other option.  As a result, I do not have the privilege of viewing any local channel that provides opinions contrary to those of the government.
This is one of the travesties created by the PPP when its former leader chose to arbitrarily dole out the spectrum to his friends and cronies. Surely this was no accident and one can only conclude that it is and was a clumsy and boldfaced attempt by Mr. Jagdeo to control the thoughts and actions of a populace that would ultimately be exposed to only one side of the coin.
I try as much as possible not to look at the drivel that passes for local programming on NTN.  However, a few nights ago while flicking through channels I noticed the faces of Kwame Mc Coy and Bishop Juan Edghill on the screen and did a quick flick back to see what their presence on TV was all about.  There they were, trying like the proverbial boy, to make a dollar out of ninety-nine cents.
What is clear is that this election will be a watershed election in the annals of our country and the PPP is very aware of this fact.  Having had its hands forced in Parliament by the “no confidence” vote of a majority opposition; and having been pummeled by international diplomats, the party is being dragged hogtied, kicking and screaming to the election table.  Panic has begun to step in.  Vulgar and shameless electioneering at the expense of taxpayers facilitated by the monopolization of the airwaves is in full swing as the presence of Messrs Mc Coy and Edghill so clearly indicated.
In part, the essence of the individual diatribes of these two men was that the PPP has been doing an excellent job as evidenced by the thousands of houses and house lots being erected and distributed; that the Opposition was trying hard to discredit the government with its allegations of corruption but that the said Opposition was being exposed at every turn as the evidence of where the monies were spent is being made transparent by the government for all to see etc. etc. Well we all know the truth.
It doesn’t matter to these gentlemen that if and when water does flow through the pipes to those houses, it is rusty brown.  It doesn’t matter that the people in those houses cannot afford to pay their utility bills and sometimes resort to stealing electricity.  It doesn’t matter that people are being shaken down each day by corrupt elements within the Police Force while the government looks the other way.
It doesn’t matter that IMCs usurp the positions of duly elected officials.  It doesn’t matter that our daughters are raped by power-drunk officials; we have the highest suicide rates in the world; we are labeled as one of the most corrupt countries in the world; there is no fiscal responsibility within our cash-based society.  It doesn’t matter that we are a narco-state.  It doesn’t matter that the laws of the land are being flouted left, right and centre.  It just doesn’t really matter.
Now I would like to ask a couple of questions of these gentlemen:
1.    Where did some of the government ministers and high-level functionaries within the PPP get the money to build their mansions in Pradoville, Leonora, Happy Acres and such places?
2.    Why does the PPP continue to divert revenues that should rightly go into the consolidated fund to NICIL so as to avoid the scrutiny of parliament?
3.    Why does a government that is so confident; that it is working in the best interest of the majority of the populace, feel the need to literally buy votes by handing out hard cash under the guise of “because we care?”
4.    Why are so many close friends of the PPP either on their way to, or in jail in the US?
Editor, in any other country in the world, the Minister of Finance who has spent billions of dollars without approval would have either demitted office in shame or been fired.  In any other country in the world, a chief lawmaker caught on tape warning a journalist of the impending demise of his fellow colleagues for exposing the endemic corruption within his party and government would have been severely sanctioned and forced out of office, if not prosecuted.  Not so in Guyana.  A person of this ilk is embraced, comforted, supported and protected by the PPP and its leader.
But…I too am comforted.  I find my comfort in the words of our late poet Martin Carter as he wrote in his Poems of Resistance.  “Inexorably and inevitably, a day will come.  If I do not live to see that day, my son will see it.  If he does not see it, his son will see it.”
I truly believe that if I live to see May 11, 2015, I will see that day.
Clifford Christiani