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Aug 07, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
The story of the scorpion and the frog is perhaps known to most adults in perhaps all the countries in the world. The scorpion sits on a stone pillar in the middle of the river and the water is rising rapidly. The scorpion knows he is about to drown. There appears a frog swimming his way to land.
The scorpion begs the frog to take him across. The frog refuses. He says that as soon as land is reached the scorpion will sting him to death. The scorpion implores and promises he will not do that. So on the back of the frog he climbs and they are on their way. Before land can be reached, the frog receives a deadly sting; “Why did you do that, now both of us are going to sink and die,” the frog exclaimed. The scorpion looks at him, and nonchalantly and murmurs; “I can’t help it, it is instinctive, it is in my nature.”
This is the story of dictatorship. We just saw it in Zimbabwe last week. We saw it throughout history. The present generation in the world will see it over and over again. Maybe the world’s most infamous example is the 1939 Non-Aggression Pact between the worst two dictators civilization ever saw. Hitler and Stalin inked their sacred deal not to attack each other. In 1941, Germany invaded the USSR. By that act, we will never know if Stalin would have done the same.
The scorpion will kill because that is his nature. Autocratic systems will not humanize their authoritarian rule. They will not transform themselves into understanding and considerate machines. They cannot. Dictatorships are scorpions. It is in their nature to expand and press on. They maul you, and will repress you relentlessly. They will only stop when you stop them. If the frog had stopped the scorpion by throwing him off mid-stream, he would have lived longer.
The story of the scorpion and the frog most aptly applies to the PPP Congress in Berbice that concluded last Sunday. From the first word spoken by President Ramotar to the last closing address, not even a fraction of a sentence was voiced about dialogue or reaching out or even a subtle indication of concessions. From the lips of every speaker came the platitudes, inanities and rhetoric that characterize autocratic systems with their inherent authoritarian instincts.
From the open addresses on stage to the plenary sessions, reality went out the window, replaced by the most macabre judgements that a human can bestow on him/herself. Here we go. GECOM is pro-opposition. Nothing was said about when this bias originated. But if GECOM is biased it has to be the biggest donkey since animals first came onto to earth.
The PPP has been in control of Guyana after five successive elections administered by GECOM. If GECOM is pro-opposition, and if President Ramotar is to be believed as when in December 2011 he said the election was rigged, then how come the PPP won the executive presidency in 2011?
There can only be one explanation. The donkey is self-destructive to control an organization, rig the elections it has dominance over, yet its enemy won the poll. If GECOM is in the opposition camp then how come Boodoo almost gave the entire results to the PPP with only one opposition-appointed member, Vincent Alexander, spotting the “conspiracy” of Boodoo?
The private media came in for savage treatment by Mr. Ramotar. This is old, stale, foul-smelling wine spilling out again. Mr. Jagdeo, Mr. Ramotar’s predecessor, spent the greater part of his twelve-year-old reign denouncing the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News. At a dinner in 2010 hosted by the Private Sector Commission, then President, Jagdeo openly advocated a boycott of the Kaieteur News.
The lamentations from PPP leaders about the harm the private media are doing to the power base of the PPP are so boring that even the most hard core supporters are not moved by this journey into phantasmagoric senility. But these hard core supporters by now must have asked their leaders why the glossy Guyana Times, its partner the Guyana Chronicle, its junior partner, the Mirror, and their sidekicks Channel 11, 65 and 69, have not knocked out of contention, the KN, SN, Capitol News, Prime News and Demerara Waves?
But are they allowed to ask anything?
Here is what the Stabroek reported about the Congress: “Gail Teixeira quickly shut down critical questions from members…” Maybe Teixeira should have read to them that line from the Bible; “My father has chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.”
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