Dear Editor,
In the world of comedy, there is the slapstick, farce, and screwball varieties, among others. The PPP Gov’t has come to stand as the best example of all three. I wouldn’t rule out its championship prominence with the other types of comedy. Take this serious matter of war between the US and Israel, on one side, and Iran, on the other. The government took a first step forward, promptly put its foot in its mouth. Then, it did a two-step reverse step, and took a contrasting position. Observers, however shortsighted, have to note a bunch of juvenile amateurs pretending to be statesmen. They are careless one day, and try to recover ground on the next by pretending to be sober and responsible. Consider the ‘laff-a-minute’ slapstick that distinguishes it from all others in this hemisphere. Truth be told, even the women in the hemisphere put the PPP Gov’t men to shame.
First, the PPP Gov’t took aim at Iran and delivered a broadside: condemnation for an unprovoked attack. Apparently, in the haze and hurry to register for the record how far the PPP’s nose is attached to the US anatomy, short thrift was given to the earlier development where Iran took its share of blows from the US and Israel. The Iranian leadership is said to be evil, and that serves as a green light to race through, launch missiles. Increasingly, national sovereignty is reduced to tatters, more a standard of the past. Also, the rule of law, the restraining power of international law, and the conventions of war are kicked around like a football, when such suits the ambitions and visions of strongmen. Strongmen who are either bored or impatient (and contemptuous) with rights of nations, human rights, and the right way to engage in hostilities. If India’s Modi or China’s Jinping decide to take a page from that playbook, then an already upside-down world careens into the chaotic. Netanyahu showed a tethered world how a strongman (with powerful backing) operates with arrogance and disdain, as he did in Gaza. Before him, Vladimir Putin, he of visions for a resurgent and dominant Mother Russia, cast his eye on Ukraine, and now he is stuck up to his neck in that quicksand.
Guyana has its own troubles with a covetous and vastly more powerful neighbour. Therefore, it has to walk a tight line, one where its leaders talk of the power of law, then live it most scrupulously. Instead, its leaders have overcompensated to such an extent that there is neither national independence nor national leadership character in existence anymore. Here there is readiness to bend backwards and fall over to be on the side of the US, right or wrong. Not a word could have been said by the PPP Gov’t brass when the extraction of a leader occurred in next door Venezuela. No position of honour could be taken for longstanding friends, Cubans, when the order came: they must leave. Welcomed and embraced before, abandoned due to crass and craven surrender to the dictates of those who hold the keys to political power, and the retention of it.
Having condemned Iran for engaging in the “unprovoked”, the PPP Gov’t, that now has a face disfigured by sludge and grime, could still call for dialogue. Who is
listening to this government? Who has any respect for its champions? A government and its make-believe warriors that take a biased and totally overboard position one day, then still has the gall to pretend to be a tension reliever, the next. Guyana, with the PPP at the helm, is not looked upon as a credible state, or its agents as honest brokers. Those were sold down the drain, as a matter of political expediency. The result is that this country is seen as a cypher, despite all of its natural riches. And its leaders as hollowed men who love to hear their voices, but represent little other than empty barrels at full blast.
Dismiss one side first, then call for dialogue. It isn’t evenhanded. It isn’t the taking of a neutral stand. Why hasn’t Guyana manifested a fair and equal handling of a sensitive situation by calling out the initiators of war under some spurious cover, and those who violate their own laws? There is comedy and what Guyanese call ‘laff’ story. The PPP Gov’t is now the epitome of both.