It appears that someone completely forgot to tell the state-run newspaper that the day after the President makes a historic presentation to the National Assembly pledging to work together with the political opposition in a new-look Parliament is not the most appropriate day on which to unleash an editorial tirade against one of the political parties with which the government is seeking an accommodation to ensure that every bill that comes before the House is not attended by an outbreak of bloodletting.
On Friday February 10th President Donald Ramotar was to have given a historic ‘throne speech’ to the nation from inside the walls of the National Assembly. It was to have been an uplifting presentation, exhorting the Parliament to use its circumstances to work together in the interest of the nation, to let this juncture in the country’s political history mark the beginning of the end to political bickering and to recognize that there is really not a great deal to be gained by the infuriating practice of reflecting on the past, not to learn from that past but simply for the sake of making a cheap political point.
The headline on the state paper’s editorial on Saturday February 11 led us to believe that it was about the success which the current rice crop in Essequibo is experiencing when the rains are wreaking havoc in the other rice growing areas, something which, of course, we are all elated to hear since, with global food shortages being an ever present threat we are well-positioned to sell just about every grain of rice that we can produce. That, indeed, is the way it started………….with uplifting figures and kudos for the rice farmers and, of course kudos for the political administration ….then, all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose! Rewind to the bad old days of the PNC! Man the ramparts! Roll out the heavy artillery! It’s recrimination time! Sandwiched between the two sections that sing the praises of the Essequibo rice crop is a vicious broadside on the PNC, the kind of tirade that even The Mirror would have been hard-pressed to match. Half a dozen or so vicious lines claimed that the PNC had “extirpated the rice industry,” causing rice farmers “in their droves” to abandon their once-thriving rice cultivation for options that brought them by far, less economic fortunes.” And that “new life” and “new hope” were only returned to the industry with (guess what?) “the restoration of democracy and the coming to power of the PPP/C in 1992.
After that the state paper’s editorial goes straight back into patting the Essequibo rice farmers on the back and talking about how well rice is doing under the PPP/C. It was truly one of those peculiar editorial offerings which one might have thought – but for the good news about how well rice is doing in Essequibo – was crafted purely to insert those few lines about the rice industry having “gone to the dogs” under the PNC.
Of course no one denies that rice is now doing a good deal better than it has done in the past, though with expanded cultivation, better technology and higher prices prevailing, it is more than a little absurd to make comparisons between what obtained a quarter of a century ago and what obtains today.
Needless to say every story has twenty two sides and the moment the editorial appeared there was no shortage of conflicting accounts of what really used to happen in the rice industry and why, as the state paper put it, the rice farmers abandoned “their once-thriving rice cultivation for options that brought them far less economic fortunes.” The other story is that the abandonment was in fact a political directive from the PPP which many farmers did not support but were forced to go along with lest they woke up one morning and found their rice fields flooded.
But that’s not the real story here. The real story is more of a question. Why would the state paper, in the middle of an otherwise perfectly acceptable editorial on the current successes of rice in Essequibo insert a flagrant piece of political vitriol, which sticks out like a sore thumb and do so just the day after the President of the Republic drops a broad hint about moving forward, in other words, putting the past behind us?
