OPINION: Misinformation, disinformation, assassination: bi-directional

Last Updated on Saturday, 14 November 2026, 7:02 by Written By Denis Chabrol

By GHK Lall

Pres Ali has every right to take measures that he sees and thinks appropriate to protect himself and others in his ruling clique from offensive Facebook posts.  Counsel Pieters in answering to the canons of his calling has a job on his hands.  The issues are manifold, severe, and depleting: misinformation, disinformation, derogation, and character assassination, among other similarly vile practices.  Public figures also need their space, and their peace.  Proper protections must be theirs.  This is the foundation.  From there, I build upwards, add a few boards of counsel of my own, and know that this will reach the right people in the president’s circle.  The question is, what then?

Pres Ali may not have in mind what others pin on him.  Suppression of free speech.  Dread of the power of truth.  More barriers to block the light.  Of what ministers and even the president himself may be up to, have attached to their names.  Why lose sleep if it is legit?  Why fear any bearer of false witness, any deliverer of blows foul and self-destructive?  When it is, the legal profession comes on hard times; scraps for business.

On the other hand, with rising to the heights, with the trust of the Guyanese people vested, there’s affixed a series of tight obligations.  Why is this owned, part of a bag of assets?  How was it obtained?  How could it be obtained, and so many and so often, considering official cash flow.  I think these are fair subjects for public ventilation, is an overstretch to describe as character assassination.  Or lies.  Counsel Pieters will have to walk a fine line, sift through his materials, while all the time being sensitive to the fact that his journey is an extremely precarious one.  May he prove to be more of a pro that enlightens.  May he be less of an insider operator seeing crimes where they don’t exist.  Or nudging events and circumstances to that point where they may seem to take on the appearance of crimes.  At the end of the day, a man only has his name, his work testifies for or against.  Often his relationships and partnerships extol him or they expose him.

Mr. Pieters should know something else, and I believe that he already does.  In his September 2025 inaugural address before an honest and dishonest audience, Pres Ali made a commitment to go after peddlers of misinformation and disinformation.  Without defining either, I say why not, applaud.  Mr. Pieters may not care to know, since it isn’t within his terms of reference written by the president.  But Pres Ali should know that misinformation and disinformation, and character assassination have all been inseparable ingredients, viral ones, in his PPP Govt.  In his six years on the bridge, Pres Ali has become a miracle leader.  Check the feathers he has grown.  Observe the ostrich he has embraced as his favorite pet.  Thus, in imitation of his mascot he has grown to love burying his head in the sand.  When sand is scarce, mud works just as well.  Or whatever travels beneath both.

Mr. Pieters’ counsel to Dr. Ali should be: heal thine own self-first.  Begin by fixing thy house.  Misinformation and disinformation, with character assassination are all two-way streets.  But, even so, a national government should never sink so low, as to become a leader in all three.  I submit for Mr. Pieters and his volume of exhibits, the handiwork of Live in Guyana, and the output of PPP-controlled media to roundoff the deposit.  Mr. Pieters should be put on an extra retainer to tear away the layers and lay bare those crime, too.  A government that is the champion misinformation and disinformation, beginning from the workshop of the Office of the President, should be the last to claim victim status.

I’m against anyone assaulting any president and their kit and kaboodle.  I’m for sharp inquiries and application of heat, law, charges, on all who live their hates through their posts.  Mr. Ali has some self-searching to do.  Reexamining of himself, his record.  He has been Guyana’s worst president, with less than a half-term needed to reach that milestone.  Inerasable and inseparable from his legacy must be the existence of WIN.  Dr. Jagdeo gave Guyanese a caricature of a figure.  Dr. Ali gave Guyanese a gift of dubious proportions, many of them.  I just gave both Pres Ali and Counsel Pieters some snippets of incontestable information.  Good hunting, gents.