Dear Editor,
Leaders of the PPP Govt insist that they represent that democracy is at its best here. Free, fair, and full expression standing high and handsome, according to Drs. Ali’s, Jagdeo’s, and Nandlall’s copious, tedious presentations of the PPP’s democracy ideals. Rancidness in words, so tainted those are. To prove, I invite Guyanese. Be judges. Interpret Guyana’s twisted democracy. About frank, fearless PPP leadership. About off-camera manipulations now enmeshed in the pending BBC World Questions programme. What promised a revealing serial is now another sick PPP democracy story. The BBC was called out in Part III of my miniseries. Part IV focuses on the PPP Gov’t.
There are few anywhere that compares to the PPP brain trust for visibility and vociferousness when democracy being at its highest ever watermark in Guyana is the subject. Relative to any accompanying persuasive vibrancy and the credibility, few are worse; in deeper darkness than the PPP. The problem, the issue, is the upcoming BBC World Questions set to go live in Guyana (no pun intended). Standard One: Any government anywhere in the world is free to select its participants. The PPP could include Excellencies Ali, Jagdeo, Nandlall, Singh, Phillips, or Bharrat (Vickram). The PPP is due that right. Standard Two: BBC World Questions cannot choose who should represent the government. Standard Three: likewise, the PPP Gov’t should not choose for the BBC World Questions producers, which Guyanese should be on the panel. Be they from other political aisles of Guyana; or civil society. The PPP Gov’t should have no say. Example: India is about to play New Zealand for T20 World Cup honours. India picks its team, has home field advantage (and Bumrah). No mas. Certainly, no say in New Zealand’s final XI. Repeat: BBC World Questions arrangers should not allow the PPP to have any say in the non-PPP panel team. Never accept such. No such breath given the room to saturate the air, stain it.
For then what is being consented to, presented by, BBC World Questions? An untouched or tainted product? One that has merits, because it is neither premediated nor prearranged, so that there are preset outcomes? That is, what the government wants the world to hear, through the still vast reach of BBC World Questions. Or, in stark contrast, what is now inseparable from ugly reality: one that is not worth the time to look at, because it would be the latest representation of the distortions of democracy in Guyana? That is, a country where impressively glowing speeches are made about Guyana’s democracy, only for the virtues of that same democracy to be defecated upon, with casual abandon. With unscrupulous determination to cook the books and sell the Guyanese people, and the world of potential investors, some more pigs in bags. The pigs stink of an unwashed and poorly concealed political odors. Even the bags bring cringing and retreating from, so skin crawling is the thought of a touch.
I walk a well-trod path cleared by me. Since the PPP as a national government, as a team of conscientious and incorruptible (and people caring) oil patrimony stewards, then its record speaks for itself, is unchallengeable and irrefutable. It could give a damn about who is picked by the BBC World Questions inviters to be a contributor on its panel. The PPP picks its own speaker. The BBC World Questions is afforded the space to do the same. I stand to be corrected, but I do not think, cannot bring myself to think, that the people from the BBC side coordinating BBC World Questions in Guyana specified to the PPP Gov’t that its oil champion should be, must be, Dr. Ashni Singh. Using that as the identical standard, then the PPP Gov’t is out of place, and creates a disgrace for itself, when it directs the BBC World Questions that Harry must be out, and Jenny should be in. What that tampering and besmirching are so invasive, and so conclusive, then the end product is not worth wasting a stream of spittle upon. With regard to all members of the panel finalized, that is where I stand. Because it is what I interpret as the political tawdriness that now coursing through this entire BBC World Questions affair. It qualifies to be an affair: a cheap, sleazy, under-the-bed one. The PPP Gov’t outdid itself, looks that sickening, sullied.