A new year has arrived. As is customary, we sat and waited for the old year to pass with its disasters, its stresses and its hardships. Of course, no year is all bad. There were many highpoints along the course of 2023.
For the first time Guyana became the regional T20 champions by winning the Caribbean Premier League. People got married, welcomed their first child and some landed their first jobs. But there were many distressing things.
The Mahdia dormitory fire claimed 20 young lives; a helicopter with five top army ranks went down in the jungle; some homes went up in flames, some fires were deliberately set. There was the most recent fire in Linden that claimed three lives, two of whom were children who had just the day before travelled to spend Christmas with their aunt.
Venezuela sent shivers down the spines of Guyanese when it massed troops on the border. The fear was so real that many people packed their belongings and moved away from the North West District.
This is part of the area claimed by Venezuela.
The fear abated after President Irfaan Ali and Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro met in St Vincent at the instigation of Brazil’s President Lula and St Vincent’s Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves.
But there is still fear in another area. It is the fear of getting ill and seeking the services of the Georgetown Public Hospital. The nurses have been leaving at a rate of more than ten a month.
People who had sick relatives in the hospital, were required to go to the hospital to tidy their relatives, a job that the nurses of yesteryear once did.
The screen for the patients have all but disappeared in this oil rich country. The money is just not going to the people. Covid was bad but these days, things seem to be worse. Those with money go to the private hospitals.
When the situation overwhelms these private hospitals they simply shunt the patients back to the Georgetown Public Hospital. Poor people suffer. The government finds it more convenient to build roads and other infrastructure than to invest in people.
Children still go to school hungry with the result that many drop out. The buses that President David Granger secured to help people with the cost of transporting their children were taken out of the system. There was talk from the government benches that these buses were competing with the minibuses. There was no consideration for the struggling parents.
The past year was even bad from the point of free speech. Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo decided that there was too much criticism of the government. He has said that he would go after the social media critics.
Jagdeo is not the police. Neither is he the Minister of Information.
The government has created a situation where the opposition is almost excluded from mainstream media. Since the opposition seemed incapable of getting their message across to people they resorted to social media.
It had to reach the stage where the social media would predominate. Children no longer read books and newspapers. They rely on their phones for any information—the juicier, the better. The opposition and the vocal majority are using social media to good effect.
Needless to say, Jagdeo is angry hence his comment about going after social media. The laws of libel and slander are still on the statutes. Valid criticisms are not.
Overseas-based Guyanese Rickford Burke caused the government to invoke a move that has landed the government in trouble. For starters, an Assistant Superintendent, Rodwell Sarrabo, is not going to risk travelling to the United States in a hurry.
For the first time in Guyana’s history, a local policeman travelled to the United States to serve a writ on a Guyanese living in the United States. Not being a lawyer, I cannot say what legal effect that writ of summons has.
For sure it would have the effect of even more criticisms from Burke and others in his corner. It was social media that caused a Minister to resign by reporting on a rape that was not made public until the social media post.
Social media also made the nation aware that Guyana’s recent High Commissioner to India was seriously ill with some ailment that caused his extremities to become disfigured. The same social media made it known that the former High Commissioner was in a hospital in Canada.
Press conferences by the opposition are now broadcast on social media. In the past these were broadcast on mainstream media outlets.
But even Jagdeo and many of his Ministers have taken to social media. The Vice President himself, uses social media by having Mikhail Rodrigues, known as Critic, and is not a reporter but a foul-mouthed commentator, interviewing him. And the interview is stage managed to allow Jagdeo to say what he wants, unchallenged.
The Education Minister loves Facebook to the extent that she doesn’t hold press conferences. So when Jagdeo goes after social media, who would be the targets? And what would be the charges?
A lawyer, commenting on a case that saw the court freeing some former and serving senior policemen on a conspiracy charge, said that the situation is such that the state is charging people with no intention of securing a conviction. He said that the charges are simply to harass people.
But even if that is the case, how do such matters end up in court? The Director of Public Prosecutions must know whether there is evidence to support a charge. Yet these charges go through.
Surely, these raise questions about the rule of law in Guyana. A court ruled that it was a travesty of justice for the government to fail to confirm a Chancellor and a Chief Justice. President Irfaan Ali told a press conference that the people are in place so that there is no immediate need to confirm them.
He is perpetrating the travesty.
And these could be the people needed to rule on the charges proffered against Jagdeo’s social media critics.
