Mrs. Gem Madhoo Nascimento reminded me that I didn’t come to the tribute for Ron Robinson at the Theatre Guild to honour Ron for 70 years in theatre and 60 years in radio.
I told Gem I don’t go anywhere. I used to be here, there and everywhere since I was 17 and after 17 there have been decades of me being here, there and everywhere. Now in older age, I just “chill out” with Janet Kissoon and my pets that I am literally crazy about.
I stay in my corner, write my thing and laugh to myself when I am proven right. And after 57 years in the public realm, I have been proven right on countless times. So, once more, I have been on the ball about journalism and civil society in Guyana. A man named Azeem Baksh gave an interview to Travis Chase. Both Baksh and Chase are known to be more than acquainted with a controversial rich politician.
So, read between the lines. I have a right to defend what I believe or not. I do not believe Mr. Baksh when he said that he gave the interview to Chase but not for it to be released. I know why Baksh gave the interview and why he did so. All of Guyana knows. We are in the middle of a political election campaign.
Mr. Baksh crossed the line when he brought in the President’s mother into his political games. No human should go down that road. It would have been a different story if Baksh had at lease brought out even an infinitesimal piece of evidence based on what he told Chase. So, in Baksh, we have the male version of Melly Mel (MM).
Every week, every month, MM has in her possession explosive material, the kind of which would bring down any government anywhere in the world. But the explosive stuff MM has is in fact an explosive imagination. For two years now, MM has been telling her Facebook followers exciting, disturbing stuff she has on perhaps every Cabinet member.
But from two years ago to now, there is not even one spoken taped word that MM has that forms the basis on an unacceptable conduct by any member of the Guyana Government. We come now to the male version of MM, Mr. Baksh. Right in the middle of an election campaign, Mr. Baksh makes damning allegations against the President.
Not satisfied with his campaign dirt, he brings in the President’s mother. Mr. Baksh has not produced even one taped word that implicates any Cabinet member. You have to be a stupid Guyanese not to know what Mr. Baksh was up to. I hope the law confronts Mr. Baksh. But let’s analyse how the private media and civil society have treated this disgraceful attack on the President’s mother.
The fact is they haven’t treated with the issue at all. The attack on the President’s mother is such an abhorrence that it is difficult to see that happening in another country. You just do not bring innocent family members into your attacks on politicians.
By what reason of the mind, a human would want to say disparaging things about a politician’s family when those family members are never in the public eyes and are as distant from politics as the North and South poles.
The President’s mother is in her seventies and has never made a public political statement in her life. It has to be a degenerate mind of the most anti-civilised kind to want to campaign against an incumbent and scandalise his mother. Do such people exist in real life? Well, they do in Guyana.
So we return to me boasting of how I laugh when I am proven right. Where are the private media on how they feel about what has been done to the President’s mother? Not one word has been printed on Mr. Baksh’s mischief. Where is the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA)? Look in the coming weeks and months and you will see how right I am in my knowledge of my country.
In those coming weeks and months, the Stabroek News is going to carry on its front page, a press release by the GHRA. That is all the GHRA’s does with its functionalism – it issues press releases.
So, nothing from the GHRA, nothing from Christopher Ram, nothing from the private media. But there is also nothing from any opposition parties on the terrible fiction cast upon the president’s mother. Don’t they feel that Baksh went too far? Or maybe, they are identical versions of Baksh?
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.
