By GHK Lall-Somebody with the tools, the capabilities, the positioning took down Mr. Azruddin Mohamed’s Facebook page. A step in the dark, it is. To leave 500,000 Facebook visitors and sightseers stranded in the dark is dangerous. It makes them studious, lead to the curious, then the furious.
Was it the Guyana Police Force alone? It is doubtful, since the Police in Guyana do not act on their own. Is it the people who have oversight over local cyber matters? Could be, but they would have to have orders. From subtraction there comes recognition. There’s only one group left standing: the people in red.
Those who wouldn’t be caught dead doing what is right by Guyanese. Especially for a citizen such as Azruddin Mohamed. Taking out Mr. Mohamed’s Facebook page is an action that is loaded with heat. How long will that hold? By what order? By whose constitution? From the high side, the legal side, I segue to the side of those who count. The people now left stranded. The people now forced to face the facts and deal with their plight.
Why take this step, venture this far relative to Mr. Mohamed’s Facebook page? What is there to fear? What is there to hide? How much is there to fear and hide? Create a vacuum, and the multitude has no option but to think for themselves. This where the boomerang effect comes into its own. It is the law of unintended consequences. Blanking Mr. Mohamed’s Facebook page, and blocking him from access, doesn’t leave Guyanese in the barren wilderness.
It propels them into a state of agitation at their officially enforced darkness. They already have had enough with blackouts. To introduce a blackout on their daily Facebook fixes is to make the masses mad. This is how fence sitters make the move to believers and followers. They finally take the plunge and become actors in the great Guyana political game, all of its sordid upheavals.
Reducing Mr. Azruddin Mohamed’s Facebook to an empty screen doesn’t send him underground. It pushes him to higher ground. It doesn’t leave his followers in ignorance. It highlights the arrogance and lawlessness of the State. And who is the State today? When the Facebook facility of the Leader of the Opposition, a constitutional officeholder, can be subject to such official deformity, then where does that leave the small man or woman?
Those objecting to the rottenness of leadership and the rancid nature of national governance. Who else is at risk? Who could fall afoul of the State’s malevolent Palace Guard, and be made to pay a price? If it could happen to a man of Mohamed’s standing (in Guyana’s parliamentary wells, and before Guyana’s magistracy), then no one else is immune from the reaching, grasping, treacherous claws of an out-of-control State.
On the heels, in the throes, of this Facebook development, Guyanese are past the loss of confidence in their authorities and agencies. They have lost their sense of comfort that there are some places, and certain actions, that would not be contemplated, never implemented. When they are proven wrong, then the boomerang effect stirs to life, and begins the march of its decapitating arc.
There will be fallout for this. For when one freedom after another is violated and spat upon, then soon enough there are no freedoms left. This is the devil that the Guyanese people stare at, weigh on how they must confront. They can run and seek shelter. Then, doing both will be the only choices left to them for the rest of their lives.
Last, WIN Mohamed has demonstrated that he can fight a good fight. I wish him the best. I fight for Guyanese who should sense the walls closing in around them, the roof caving in, and no escape route available. The blocking, deleting, interfering with a Facebook page that boasts 500,000 interested parties should confirm one thing for Guyanese. There are some desperate people in official Guyana.
