OPINION: The reckless desperation of the ruling party: when cow ah guh a slaughterhouse….

Last Updated on Saturday, 9 May 2015, 2:05 by GxMedia

The calls from various circles are for the cleaning up a real nasty campaign. Call again. Guyanese (and foreigners) can call again unsuccessfully, as one struggling, increasingly desperate side is not listening. For a frenzied PPP has accumulated a record of practiced malice that is premeditated and calculated; there is no stopping it now. This is the damning picture that the public evidence reveals about the campaign run by the ruling PPP. It is one that is reckless, out-of-control, and dangerous to all society.

To date, and subject to correction, there has not been in the public domain a single offensive, even questionable utterance from the likes of David Granger and the APNU leadership. The same could also be said for the AFC men, who have succeeded in managing emotions better, resulting in public pronouncements that manifest a more temperate texture. They are more measured, more disciplined. The combined opposition, though under tremendous duress, has refused to be goaded, or trap itself, or respond in kind.

On the other hand, PPP brass continually experiments with the explosive by pushing the outer edges of the envelope, in the hope of snapping the patience and equanimity of adversaries and associated supporters. It is strategy doomed to failure by its obvious objectives, and its transparent nature. Still, the ruling party persists in relentlessly pressuring an already tense, fragile environment. These are the self-destructive actions of a group that has given up on winning, knows that the die is cast, and that the battle is lost. It explains the shrillness, the meanness, and the slashing, piercing attacks. When looked at closely, it could be noticed that this deep-seated ugliness, this utter contempt for Guyanese (and sometimes others) started even before elections, a few examples follow.

There was then Minister Kellawan Lall insulting Georgetown residents; sitting President Jagdeo refusing questions from blacklisted reporters, banning some media people; and abusing still others; incumbent president Ramotar reportedly calling a heckler in the interior “stupid” and digging deeper to share that “Jagdeo would ah slap yuh”; the minister overseeing the education of our youth carrying on with appalling abandon in the home of an ambassador; the Home Affairs Minister savaging diplomatic parlance with the odiferous; and the upright Attorney-General taped speaking about weapons and uttering threats. There are media reports of a heckler inexplicably transformed into a person of interest in a rape investigation; of presidential guards roughing up (slapping) a critic in the hinterlands; and of attempts, believed shelved, to banish an objecting teacher elsewhere to discipline him.

Bear in mind these were all prior to official campaign activities, but speak for themselves. This is a ruling party that refuses to share public documents, to obey governance rules, or follow the law. It is why nothing should be surprising or different today. The purposeful scorched earth policy now embraced in the public electioneering efforts of the PPP, as epitomized by Messrs Jagdeo, Ramotar, Ramsaran and others is merely an intensifying of prior pervasive obscenities. These are not aberrations but part of a tawdry strategy; not momentary lapses, but expressions of core beliefs and standards. Unfortunately, from all indications, more of the same is to come.

The qualified apologies, limited crafty criticisms from within, and reprimands for the record simply disfigure more hideously the already grotesque assaults on the nation’s consciousness.Rather eerily, this intemperate continuum reminds of that old, familiar Guyanese saying that goes like this: when cow ah guh ah slaughterhouse he nah kay weh he…. (The Minister of Health is the most proper person to supply the missing word). From all indications, that cow represents the electoral prospects of the ruling party, and it knows the fate that waits. It is why the party does not care about the civility and niceties associated with the who and the where and the what and the how during these critical times. It will just simply and reflexively spit

upon all, urinate upon all, and defecate upon all in its desperate flailing to thwart its approach of the gateway to the political netherworld. So it goes kicking and trashing, and with growing resistance and verbal incontinence.

Truly, those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.