Dear Editor,
In his October 6 propaganda missive, `Contrary to what the newspapers report, Guyana is on the move,’ Dr. Randy Persaud, who doggedly continues to try and justify to his bosses that he is worthy as the administration’s new hire on propaganda spin, suddenly decided he wanted to start a dialogue with Guyanese in the Diaspora about what he considers real-time progress in Guyana. Who does this guy really think he is? In fact, where was his voice or pen for the last dozen years since Dr. Cheddi Jagan died and Guyanese at home and abroad have been engaging each other and government officials in the letters columns of the local dailies?
Is he not aware that a few years ago, his President invited all Guyanese to join him in a national conversation on the hot button issues of the day, even though Guyanese were already doing so in the letters columns of those private dailies that would avail space to letters, both complimentary and critical of government? And even though many of us, at the time, welcomed the initiative, we did not know that the President’s concept of a national conversation was all about the government picking the topic and dictating the course the discussion would take. We also did not know the state-run taxpayer-funded Guyana Chronicle would refuse to publish letters critical of government, even though many such letters fit the description of a national conversation.
The only conclusion I can come to on this latest invite by Dr. Persaud, therefore, is that it is based on both personal and political motives. Personal because this could become his platform on which to present/project himself to readers as government’s new political pit-bull in a more structured setting that the letters columns tend to provide. Apparently his opinion column in the Chronicle is not generating the kind of reaction he might have expected. And political because it allows him to do the job for which he was specifically hired: defend and promote the Jagdeo administration in the wake of a series of serious failings that were magnified by the private dailies (not the Chronicle), and which continue to be accessed via Internet by hundreds of thousands of Guyanese and foreigners abroad.
It can also be argued that Dr. Persaud’s new role is to help set the stage for a possible third term for the President and or to help present a positive image of government to potential foreign investors in Guyana’s LCDS. Obviously an image-conscious person, the President is on record not only accusing the private dailies of presenting a negative image of Guyana (the negatives are really related to his government and not Guyana, per se), but he went so far as to label the private media as the new political opposition for doing their job in publishing news that expose the failings of his government. This label may have been intended as a put down, but it wound up pushing the media onto a pedestal as doing a more effective job than the main political opposition.
I really don’t know how either the President or his new-found spin doctor expect to convince Guyanese that they genuinely seek to have a national conversation or dialogue with the people if the government attacks then capriciously withdraws state ads from one independent newspaper, deprecatingly paints another independent daily and then urges businesses to stop buying advertising space in it, and allows the Chronicle to retain a PNC-type policy not to publish letters critical of government and its leadership, or the PPP and its leadership.
And even if we are to risk assuming that Dr. Persaud genuinely wants a dialogue with Guyanese diasporans, we have to also assume that the dialogue will be in the form of e-mails to the dailies. If so, the question is: will the dialogue be limited to the private dailies (Stabroek News and Kaieteur News), or will Guyana Chronicle be open to publishing letters, even if critical of the government, without editing them for content which the government may not like or agree with?
Meanwhile, I read the laundry list of items he identified as positive signs Guyana is on the move. As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is progress, and from the political vantage point of myself and many other Guyanese at home and abroad, after seventeen years, I don’t know that Guyana has even begun to live up to her potential, let alone be considered as making progress.
If borrowing money for special projects qualifies as movement, then after seventeen years, Guyana is still crawling when it should have been up and running. Of course crawling is a part of movement, but it pales in comparison to running.
Then there is the issue of the man-made plague called ‘blackouts’. That was not supposed to be still happening after seventeen years of PPP in power. Hello? If there is no constant supply of electricity and potable water in the nation’s capital, it renders moot the argument of real progress taking place.
Like his fellow spinner, Dr. Prem Misir, he can rely on the Office of the President and GINA for all his facts and figures to augment his case for movement, but if he refuses to see the other more important movement taking place – that every three out of four Guyanese with a tertiary level education are moving out of Guyana – then he refuses to see that, despite window dressing developments, no country can really move forward without its most precious resource – people – remaining in the country.
We know thousands of Guyanese started fleeing Guyana during the era of the PNC in government, and while we thought that the situation would be reversed after the PPP reclaimed power in 1992, we are in paralyzing shock that in the last seventeen years, Guyanese are still moving abroad. The only conclusion we can come to for this is that Guyana is moving, alright, but in the wrong direction, so Guyanese keep moving out.
As a primary school kid back in the late sixties, I remember loving to read the orange-coloured hard cover Student’s Companion. The last few pages of that book had the names of governments of the Caribbean, the names of their governor generals, prime ministers/premiers and cabinet ministers, and the population of each country.
Back then, according to the Companion, Guyana’s population stood at approximately 700,000. Over forty years later, Guyana’s population still stands at approximately 700,000. What gives?
If it is true that over half a million Guyanese are residing overseas, this PPP government failed tragically in the last seventeen years to tell or show us diasporans what its viable plans were/are to attract an initial wave of between 15% and 25% of diasporans to help develop Guyana, because there is no way that Guyana can truly move forward without massive input from overseas Guyanese (check how much is remitted in finances each year) or while hemorrhaging the people now at home.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
Queens, NY
