Dear Editor,
Has anyone ever wondered why language as a medium of communication is extolled as one of humanity’s loftiest inventions? One word can make a monumental difference between failure and success, disaster and fortune, war and peace, life and death. A simple semantic misinterpretation of one word can wreck friendship, inspire morbid thoughts of marital separation, sever bilateral relations, instigate social unrest, and even provoke hostilities. Such is the power of language when a tiny word can bring about the collapse of mighty empires.
To illustrate the explosive potential of one word, let us examine the pivotal role it has played since that glorious moment when the No-Confidence Motion was passed on December 21, 2018. It pushed the disgraced coalition to commit a repertoire of heinous illegalities and moral depravities that guaranteed their inevitable disintegration and possible extinction.
These include, but is not limited to:
1. Spending millions of dollars to ascertain that 33 is the majority of 65. This brought unbearable shame and earned the derision of the world.
2. Appointing James Patterson as GECOM Chairman, knowing it was unconstitutional, and then defying judicial pronouncements.
3. Engaging in corrupt deals costing Guyanese taxpayers billions of dollars: the airport fiasco, land grabbing orgies, unauthorised contracts circumventing procurement statues, Harbour Bridge feasibility studies.
4. Violating the supreme laws of the land routinely with reckless impunity. It is delinquency running amok! Bullyism gone berserk!
5. Squatting in office unabashedly while arrogating for themselves dictatorial powers, super salaries and a largesse of undeserved perquisites.
6. Demonstrating unrestrained arrogance, insensitivity and contempt for legal and moral obligations to act responsibly.
7. Inefficiency, incompetence and sloth in battling burgeoning crimes, with Police presenting statistics of dubious credibility that seem to mock commonsense and human decency.
8. Using the hallowed institutions of GECOM and the courts to perpetuate the sinful acts of sacrilege by delaying and deferring elections.
9. Annexing GECOM and the Guyana Police Force as vital organs to execute the dirty political work of APNU/AFC.
10. Splurging billions of dollars plundered from the Treasury for election campaigning under the charade of community outreaches.
11. Ridiculing our nation with the infamous Mingo theatrics at the vote tabulation centre, using a magical mathematical formula for an APNU victory.
12. Witnessing a dying Mingo miraculously healed. Was it by invoking the spirit of the Kabaka? Or a Hollywood Academy Award performance?
13. Subverting the integrity of the Judiciary to delay or stop the counting of ballots.
14. Ignoring international condemnations and threats of sanctions.
15. Treating overseas and local observers to a menu of disrespect, hostility, intimidation, and threats, including revocation of accreditation.
16. Making liberal and wanton use of State assets for party electioneering.
17. Running out of idiotic ideas, they probed frantically in the dark and came up grinning with a real sledgehammer blow that stunned an already dazed nation: the dossier! The PNC’S gospel of satanic falsities!
This list is woefully inadequate to paint the full picture of the perversities that occurred following the No-Confidence vote. But I come back to my original point of the power of language. It took one word, just one word, to burst open Pandora’s Box of criminal transgressions committed by the coalition after December 2018. That word also radically changed the destiny of Guyana and will be immortalised for the erudition of all posterity. It was valiantly uttered by the legendary hero Charrandas Persaud when he emphatically said “Yes!”. The seismic force of this monosyllabic word rattled and pulverised the foundation of APNU/AFC. What is left is the debris of shame. The edifice of the coalition has crumbled into smithereens. It has turned into a derelict waste.
This time of reckoning has come! The ferocious cries and angry shouts of the oppressed people are admonishing villain Granger and his notorious gang of abominable rogues to step back from the precipice of self-destructive tyranny.
Yours sincerely,
Chandra Persaud
