Factual news versus fake politics.

Mar 02, 2017 Source

It is easy to predict failed leaders. I wrote my column that appeared in Tuesday’s edition and submitted it long before Mr. Jagdeo held his press conference on Tuesday afternoon. I couldn’t tell what would come out of Jagdeo’s mouth. But I did predict that in his forthcoming press meeting, he will not apologize for any egregious mistakes made and even acknowledge some of his depraved directions.
True to form, Jagdeo said not a word about the hundreds of sickening policies his government pursued. Any commentator could rattle these off the top of their heads by the dozens.
At his press conference last Monday, Jagdeo presented a portrait of what a fool and ironically what a dangerous human being he is. First, he admitted that Kaieteur News was influential in removing his party from government. He said that Kaieteur News spread fake news that allowed the APNU+AFC coalition to win the 2015 polls.
The other side of that coin is that his fake news that came from NCN, the Chronicle, Guyana Times, channel 65, channel 69 and the Mirror, his party newspaper, was pathetically ineffective. In addition to these news rooms, Jagdeo had a paid school of bloggers who wrote the most poisonous vilifications about PPP’s critics. These cronies took aim at the families of persons who denounced the PPP.
Jagdeo should be cast aside by the PPP for his lamentation that fake news cost the PPP the elections. He is admitting that he was a failure. The PPP had six media houses and dozens of bloggers at its disposal in the 2011 and 2015 elections, yet according to Jagdeo, the fake news of the Kaieteur News was more influential.
Why then after this record, the PPP would want to have Jagdeo as their leader?
Jagdeo, Ramotar and the PPP lost the 2011 and 2015 elections not because of fake news of which Jagdeo’s controlled media houses were churning out like flood waters from a tsunami, but because this newspaper and other independent media houses exposed the man, his party and their corrupt, authoritarian politics. The forensic audits findings will destroy whatever little staying power Jagdeo and Ramotar and the PPP have among their supporters.
Let us see what fake news Jagdeo is referring to and see if what he called fake news was not in fact actual events in the life of the oligarchic rule of he and his side kick Donald Ramotar. It wasn’t fake news but a fake marriage when Jagdeo led this country to believe he was legally married. The common-law wife told the nation he refused to sign the marriage certificate.
No Caribbean leader, and one can throw the net far and wide to cover the entire world, has faced the types of devastating accusations Varshnie Singh made against Mr. Jagdeo. She claimed she was ejected from the marital bedroom five days after the Hindu wedding ceremony.
It wasn’t fake news when Berbicians were reeling from depression out of the thought that the US embassy would be stingy with visas after a senior Minister openly insulted the US Ambassador at the man’s home and the Minister’s philistinism was public endorsed by the Ramotar Government. Dr. Roger Luncheon described the Minister’s unbecoming conduct as a feral blast against the Ambassador.
Maybe after that incident Berbicians decided that once the PPP remained in office, their visas would be in trouble so it was best to get the PPP out of government. Was it fake news or decadent living that PPP mandarins were building mansions with swimming pools with state funds for which the forensic audits will send them to jail?
One senior minister sold a house on state land which was specifically awarded to construct a dwelling house for the applicant. The Minister built a mansion and sold it to businessman, David Narine, for one million US dollars.
It wasn’t fake news when pensioners’ money was jeopardized when Jagdeo took billions of dollars from the NIS and invested it in Lawrence Duprey’s ventures. Billions of dollars in NIS money vanished after Duprey’s empire collapsed. The actuarial report for 2013 indicated that NIS in 2014 would be paying out more money than it collected. This is what Jagdeo did to this nation.
It wasn’t fake news when top Guyanese nationalists who love this country warned President Jagdeo that the Chinese contract for the Skeldon sugar plant was a dangerous move. He was given options that involved countries that knew about building sugar factories. Skeldon, today, remains the largest investment the state ever made and the largest sum of money the state ever lost. Such a man and his party want to rule Guyana again.