Dear Editor,
There is something fascinatingly and frighteningly cultish about the political administration that has run this country for the past two decades, an asinine intellectual obstinacy that has found its own soft patch of ‘logical’ grounding where it grazes contentedly, oblivious to the reality that it is in fact ruminating in a quagmire of absurdity and unreason. How else would you explain Dr Roger Luncheon – the Voice of Government, the Hand of the King – making the following pronouncement? “I wouldn’t say that the government feels that there is any urge for them to respond to the accusations, allegations, comments that are being made by the opposition. I would want to believe that the procurement principles are public principles and when they are questioned and when they are queried I think that there are specific facilities to those who are available for those who feel aggrieved.” As obfuscatory or inscrutable as Dr Luncheon no doubt imagines his language to be, what is pellucid is that the Head of the Presidential Secretariat is missing some basic rational faculty. Public procurement principles, like all public principles, should be grounded in the rule of law. If the set of ‘principles,’ that ‘philosophy’ held by government, is in breach of the law, then the law should take precedence – if this is not the case, then perhaps the learned and otherwise verbose Attorney-General could perhaps comment to enlighten us. The specific facility to challenge breach of copyright should be the Laws of Guyana, and as the persons hired to ensure the rule of law, the aggrieved party in this case should be the democratically elected government as representative of the people of Guyana – instead we have the Government of Guyana breaching, and not for the first time, the very laws every single member of Cabinet swore to uphold without fear or favour. If it is that the Government of Guyana feels that the law is not within the public interest, then it should seek to change the law to reflect its philosophy. And to ascribe opposition political motives to all of the comments made in opposition to this blatantly irresponsible policy is singularly weak and intellectually bankrupt coming out of the Office of the President. What political brief does Ms Emma House hold in seeking to legitimately represent the intellectual property protection interests of the membership of her British publishers’ association?
To the PPP government all criticism is political and hence being political ought to be dismissed, the very sort of mindless premise that governs places like North Korea. That petulant defiance of good sense and good principle is the traditional refuge of people in power who have run out of ideas and whose only governing principle is the perpetuation of the possession of that power.
The present political administration is clearly ill equipped for dealing with the current era. What we have coming out of the Office of the President is ‘philosophy’ that was classifiable as necessarily extinct twenty years ago, and is fossilized at present. With his every inane pronouncement on this issue, Dr Luncheon is not only providing evidence that he should give serious consideration to a perhaps overdue retirement, but he is more importantly exposing all of Guyana to tremendous international embarrassment.
Yours faithfully,
Ruel Johnson
