Dear Editor,
Upon the dawning of Guyana’s new local government dispensation, may I offer through you, Editor, a warning to all the new councillors and their political patrons.
As our representatives – I do not say our leaders – they have forfeited your right to privacy. They are voluntarily under the spotlight of transparency and accountability. They may be sure that throughout the community they serve there will always be talk about all aspects of their lives. Their performance on the council may have results far beyond their local community. Beyond the spit press, they should remember the mixed effects of social media usage, in the Arab Spring and since, in several countries including ours.
Though our cabinet ministers lately give little sign that they even read newspapers, there may still be relevance to these lines written long before letters to editors and some three centuries before the invention of the smartphone:
What frenzy has of late possess’d the brain!
Though few can write, yet fewer can refrain.
– Samuel Garth
In this context I will join our President David Granger in urging the extension of internet facilities into every corner of Guyana, as a component of the promised liberalisation of the telecommunications field.
Yours faithfully,
Gordon Forte
