The news that the results from COVID-19 tests of our citizens must first be submitted to Volda Lawrence, the Caretaker Minister of Health, has been shocking enough. From the standpoint of lives being placed at risk when a critical diagnostic finding is kept from the healthcare professionals who are fighting a disease that can kill in a matter of days, to facilitating the transmission of the virus to spread exponentially, it is criminal in its impact.
This is a threat to our nation’s health that should not be taken lightly and Lawrence must explain the reason for the insertion of herself to the apex of the efforts to actually medically fight against COVID-19. Lawrence is bereft of any medical expertise. Why exactly would she need to have these test results?
But we do not expect Lawrence to reveal what was actually behind her decision, since this would blow the cover off what we only warned against in this space only yesterday: the PNC has reverted to form and is now openly firmly possessed of its authoritarian mindset. In his novel “1984”, George Orwell wrote expansively on the “compulsion to control” as the defining feature of totalitarianism. And control of information as its foundation stone: “The Party controls every source of information, managing and rewriting the content of all newspapers and histories for its own ends.
The Party does not allow individuals to keep records of their past, such as photographs or documents.” And as we are now seeing, the party will even control medical information to decide who will be saved or who will die.
Yesterday, we alluded to the control of information by Burnham’s PNC regime during the 1970s and ‘80s. But even with his controlling the economy by nationalising 80 per cent of the economy; wiping out the private business sector; the trade unions; social and cultural organisations and even culture, today the PNC represents a new and even more dangerous type of authoritarian control: fascism. We cannot fail to note the PNC’s open avowal of race-based politics – which it had practised since 2015 but insisted otherwise – following the election of March 2, which it is still in the process of rigging in broad daylight.
This sectarian orientation has been buttressed by massive spending on the armed forces and the bureaucracy, which are once again being deployed to impose “order” on the society through the doctrine of “Total Defence”.
The People’s Militia has been resuscitated and is at full strength of 1500 personnel distributed among the populace and ready at all times to be mobilised. But even more ominously, Granger has recruited retired army officers and placed them strategically in every government and state department, just as the fascists in Germany and Italy had done.
Consider the simple description of the essence of fascism and compare it to what we are seeing unfolding today: “Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and regard the complete mobilisation of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. Such a state is led by a strong leader – such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party – to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society. Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature and views political violence, war and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation.”
As with Burnham, Granger genuflects to the notion of “multi-party democracy”, but we now know this to be completely hollow, since like his mentor, he is prepared to rig elections to maintain power. While there may be other parties in the race, there is a wall that prevents them from ever reaching the finish line. What we have is a de facto one-party state, which the other parties ironically legitimise.
Of what use are elections if the winner must always be the PNC? We could burn the ballot boxes, as one proposed.
