Brotherson is millions of miles away
by Frederick Kissoon
FESTUS Brotherson is not only millions of miles away from Guyana in physical terms - he is also in relation to the facts of life and the ways of political behaviour in a changing Guyana. If the major media organisations in the world adopt the Sunday Chronicle's methodology of having analysis on a territory from someone away from the place of events then they'll be saving hundreds of millions of dollars, but would end up with wrong news all the time, even no news. Well, no news is always better than wrong news. And what FB Jr brought us in last week's Chronicle was simply wrong news. It would seem that FB Jr, our Honorary Consul in Ohio (why small Guyana needs one in Ohio?) is up to his old tricks, accompanied by an inflexible habit. When he returned from studies abroad in 1986, his mentor Burnham had just died. The Honorary Consul then approached the new President, Mr. Desmond Hoyte with a proposal to write a biography of Forbes Burnham. There were two things wrong with the Consul's approach. The cost was prohibitive, and the last thing Hoyte needed at that time was a eulogy of Burnham. FB Jr was then posted to a corner of Congress Place where he began to sulk. He then turned up in the same department I worked in at the University of Guyana. After some anti-Cuban bashing, our Honorary Consul then migrated to the U.S. His piece in the Chronicle last week is not only misleading, uninformed, and inaccurate, but strange too. One gets the feeling that, like in 1986, he has asked for something, and as in 1986 was turned down, so he turns up the propaganda against his benefactor, as he did with Hoyte. Remember our Consul was once the Editor of the PNC organ, the New Nation, and moderator for Action Line on GBC during the reign of his mentor Burnham. Brotherson's column in the Chronicle last Sunday is a regurgitation of the political miasma that emanates from three mauby-shop television talk shows. How ironic that renegade PNC executive, Aubrey Norton can claim there is no democracy in Guyana but enjoys the generosity of these cook-shop talk shows that abuse democracy. An abuse that would never be tolerated in any other democratic country. Not only is Guyana democratic. It is so full of democracy that Norton and his talk show caricatures could trample on it. One would have thought that FB Jr's column for last week would have been a reply to Norton. But in what could only be described as weird, FB repeated what Norton and his gossip friends put out. There is no need for any elaborate rebuttal of FB's article `The challenge of racism for President Jagdeo'. So mediocre and infantile are the arguments that a simple word for word rebuttal will suffice. Three pieces of vilification stand out and I will fill the remaining parts of this essay on rejecting these rumours. First, the charge that the Government of Guyana is practising racism. This is a charge made by the PNC since the December 1997 election. It has not found support among a number of organisations which are opposed to the government. The list includes the opposition TUF and WPA. The Guyana Human Rights Association, a group known to have little love for the PPP, has never made the claim Brotherson is making. Brotherson is a devoted reader of the Guyanese newspapers, therefore he must know that the Stabroek News has rejected the PNC's cry of official racism (now Brotherson's cry) in several editorials. The churches have not spoken on the issue. And the annual U.S. State Department report on Guyana has not commented on the practice of racism by the Government of Guyana. If Brotherson was living in Guyana he would have heard cries of racism from East Indians. They say that entrenched PNC officials in the bureaucracy are racist against them. East Indian applicants to UG make this claim. East Indian lecturers at UG say this too. Who do you believe? This is a recurring decimal in Guyanese political sociology; everyone sees a decision as race-based. And the PNC and ACDA find it politically and culturally convenient to use it to rally their supporters. The former propagandist for the New Nation hasn't lost his old Goebellian touch. He says that certain media houses did an overkill with a photo of a woman undressing on a Georgetown street during the recent public servants pay strike. Really, Brotherson knows nothing about this country, and if the Chronicle continues with his mis-analysis, it is going to face some trenchant embarrassment. The lady undressing story goes back to the PNC street protests last year. A so-called political protester took off her clothes in front of the police. Then a cook-shop show host told his viewers that the woman was stripped by the police. The wife of Stabroek News boss Mrs. Doreen De Caires then wrote a letter pointing out that it was the woman herself who undressed. During the recent strike, an opposition supporter, not a striking public servant, began taking her clothes off when confronted by the police. Two news organisations rightly highlighted the nonsense that was enveloping the strike by picturing the woman undressing. The striking public servants were embarrassed, so was the union that called the strike, so were Guyanese women, so was the nation. Where did Brotherson get this idea that the two news organisations were using the woman's picture for racist reasons? In fact, African women must have been ashamed at what the woman did. And to make matters worse, she didn't have an hour glass figure. Thirdly, FB Jr calls upon the new President to discipline and prosecute PPP and government officials known to be practising racism and corruption. How can we disagree with Festus here? But why start with PPP people? The PPP has been in power only since 1992. What about PNC cadres who not only practised racism and corruption when the PNC was in power, but even out of power are doing it now? I can point FB in the direction of a man who at the moment is earning hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly as a state official and is one of the worst Burnhamite rogues this country has produced. I work at UG and I see racism there every day and it is not coming from PPP people.
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