PPP media prostitution ring

Sep 09, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

Kaieteur News – The PPP Government is running a media prostitution ring.  It gets people to sell themselves, to peddle their minds, to push their flesh.  Why is this government and its warlike leaders so afraid of the independent media?  I try to rationalize it to myself but fail.  The government’s morbid fear of being exposed for what it is by the independent media has rushed it to the brink of excess, what I call madness itself.  The PPP Government went and built its own red-light district, and it is all in the center of public attention.  I trust that the deliverers of democracy (such as it is), the leading members of the resident diplomatic corps, are paying close attention, absorbing this indecent and lawless media cabal, and its shouts and showers of abuse that are pelted at the law-abiding in this country.

In a true democracy, there is division of labor.  The government governs in a clean, transparent manner.  The legislature makes laws for the benefit of the people.  The opposition is a watchdog.  The judiciary judges with wisdom and freedom.  The people speak their mind without fear of retribution.  And the media reports on all this in a straight-up and unfettered manner.  In the make-believe democracy preferred by the PPP Government, it is the leadership that gets to decide, sound off, and close out any discussion about what constitutes clean and transparent governance.  When that is challenged and put to shame repeatedly, the PPP leadership lets loose its media eye gougers, nutcrackers, and backstabbers.  Who would believe it when they are told that taxpayer’s money is being used to pay an army of ghost writers, public commentators turned citizen letter writers, and a brigade of goonish social media operators, to attack protesting citizens.  Believe it, I say.  When men and women can lower themselves to perform such media tricks, then what is that if not a media prostitution ring operating in broad daylight.  Take off the mascara and lipstick (fake names) and ignore the revealing apparel and come-hither aura, and these are the dregs from Guyanese society that the national government has dug up and sent out to attack principled citizens.  One big chief is so in love with his version of democracy’s media norms that he has his own standby social media troll farm hanging onto his every word and ready to utter calls for vengeance and violence against citizens. They do not worry about the law and its long reach. It is part of the setup in a regular prostitution ring, where the law enforcers are bought out and turn a blind eye, once they are allowed to continue to collect out of sight in the business corners of the street.

In this government ring, there is a ringmaster with his coiled whip to keep the troops on their toes and delivering.  How many that contribute through the independent media have been targeted today, and where is the tally sheet?  How many bold Guyanese brutalized?  Why, how, and since when has the independent media become such a thorn in the eye, such a feared presence in this country?  I will take the easy way out: it has been since the beginning going back to the 1960s, with matters never so ugly, and at such menacing levels, as today.  The why is almost as straightforward: when a government and many of its people have been about the crooked and corrupt, then they can never rest placidly, because there is that dread that they will be discovered and exposed.  Regarding the how, this is where the independent media earns its spurs.  The choice is that it sticks to the honest road and gives value to the people thirsting for authentic information.  Or that it joins with the flashy state media counterparts, who have sold all that they may have once stood for, to take the fullest advantage of PPP Government generosity.  Like a worker of the evening on the street, the more customers the better.  More fake news stories (pretended bliss) mean more cash in the pocket.  It is a sweet racket.  In the PPP Government’s media prostitution ring, greater output is intended to inundate and overwhelm.  There is state media, which houses the known characters.  There is the government-influenced private media.  There is the private media that aids and abets government calumnies and atrocities.  In the language of prostitution, they are called Johns.  Those who come crawling around corners under the cover of darkness, to sample the delights of the flesh.  Who are the ones feasting at the fleshpots of the PPP Government, if not those loading up on concessions, awards, and free money like they have never encountered in their lives.  Oil money is abundant, a veritable gravy train that helps to grease their pens and morals and conscience.  I made a mistake on the last two: those were imaginary, never present.  Whoever heard of a street worker with a conscience or a soul or morals?  This is what Guyanese live with today: the soul of a who**, those who will do anything to get even, to get ahead, and to get in the good books of those in charge. The question is who the Lord of the Flies (Roger and Jack) in the Guyana context is. Leaders or those who readily do their bidding.

Thanks to the arrangements of leading PPP lights, this is how the respected Fourth Estate has been degraded into an abused state.  It has gone from a power for truth, to mainly a cheap prostitute slaving for scheming politicians. Independent media pays hard prices.

• brutalized, Guyana, Guyanese, retribution, Roger and Jack, The government governs