…can democracy bear?
Some say we’re in the “post-truth” era, and that Donald Trump exemplified that paradigm shift in social reality in general – and in politics in particular. By the time he demitted office, fact-checkers calculated he’d told over 30,000 LIES – about TWENTY-ONE LIES EVERY DAY FOR FOUR YEARS!! And those were just the recorded public ones!! If he were Pinocchio, his nose would’ve stretched from the White House in Washington to Mar-a-Lago in Florida!!
So, the question is: Can this edifice we call “society” be sustained when folks can just lie in their teeth to get others to follow them down one yellow brick road or another? And this question now faces us right here in dear Mudland, as Opposition elements – simultaneously trying to overthrow Granger in the PNC and take his place as the Opposition – put Trump to shame.
Ironically, it was Granger himself who started the local “Lying Game” here, when he had his myrmidons from within GECOM cock up the Region 4 SOPs and blatantly lie about the elections’ results. He kept up his lies for FIVE MONTHS, until he finally had to concede after the entire world – through their representatives – stood up for the truth. But, even then, he evidently muttered under his breath as he left State House, “But I still won!” as he went to the courts as he’d done during the aforementioned five months!
But his challengers have taken the lies to new, unplumbed depths, from where your Eyewitness really fears whether our Republic can survive. After all, when you come down to brass tacks, living together in a society is an act of faith, isn’t it? We gotta assume that each one of us would adhere to the rules that we ourselves have created to coordinate our actions – and not unilaterally denounce them as “lies”. We can’t suddenly wake up one morning with the bright idea that we’ll start driving on the right side of the road!! It’ll be chaos – and mayhem – for us and others on the road!
Take the challengers’ insisting that “majoritarian democracy” is illegitimate, and there should be “shared governance” with them. But they’re simultaneously insisting they WON the same elections – without ever mentioning that if, by some miracle, they get them reversed, they’ll share the spoils with the PPP!! So, it’s a case of heads they win and tails the PPP loses!!
They tried this three-card trick back in 2015 when they WON by the same majoritarian rules – under the same ballot counting, using the same voters list – and then ruled by their lonesome for five years!!
So the PPP should’ve called them “illegitimate cabal” and create mayhem in the streets??
…about Govt actions?
The challengers haven’t confined their Lying Ways to the macro level – even though that undermines the very structure of our democracy. No Siree Bob!! They’ve taken the Goebellisian technique of repeating the big lie so often it drives out any contra view and becomes “the truth”!! Broadcasting daily – night and day – over social media, they bombard their listeners with unremitting lies. The PPP is injecting REAL COVID-19 vaccines into Indian-Guyanese and saline water into African-Guyanese! Never mind most of the nurses giving the jabs are African- Guyanese!!
Then flood hampers’ distribution invariably skipped African-Guyanese villages – but for some strange(?) reason, not a single bypassed village has been named!! Ditto for school children’s assistance for supplies. It’s also never explained how the African- Guyanese schoolchildren are bypassed when it’s all done in the public eye!!
But their encouragement to folks not to take the vaccine by outright lying about the dangers of the injection, dubiously making a fine distinction about “my body, my choice”, is the worst!
…is enough?
How many times must the challengers lie before they’re found out by their listeners as the Pied Pipers they are – who led all those gullible children to their doom?
The answer is coming at Congress!!
