Why wouldn't a government want to be loved by its subjects?

http://www.kaieteurnewsgy.com/feature%20columnists.htm

Freddie Kissoon

Why wouldn't a government want to
be loved by its subjects?
Kaieteur News, 8 August 2007

I read the Peeping Tom column last Sunday and the editorial of Monday
of this newspaper on the Guyana Forestry Commission Bill in the name of
Agriculture Minister, Robert Persaud. These two opinion pieces were
powerful indictments of the direction the rulership of Guyana has gone.
Peeping Tom refers to the Act as rotten. Indeed it is.

For those who missed those two viewpoints, briefly, the Bill's naked
intention is to deny the transparency process in the exercise of
government. The Bill is a piece of paranoia associated with the
American and Soviet Governments during the Cold War where information
was to be treated as a precious commodity dear to life. The Bill is the
same old forestry legislation but a section was added to prevent state
employee in the forestry sector from talking about their work.

An Orwellian clause was inserted that prevents an employee from writing
down any information that may have been passed on to them in the course
of their function

After reading these two judgements, I thought they had pontificated on
all the angles. But something was left out by both Peeping Tom and the
editorial. That something is the unbearable hypocrisy of the PPP when
Desmond Hoyte as president did the very thing that the PPP has done
with the Guyana Forestry Commission Bill.

During Hoyte's tenure, the House passed the Public Corporation Act. It
was designed to prevent public sector employees from talking publicly
about the nature of their work. The new section that was added to the
old forestry Bill is a piece of plagiarism. It was lifted directly from
Hoyte's Public Corporation Act. It just sickens the mind to go back to
the Mirror newspaper and read about the PPP's condemnation of Mr.
Hoyte's muzzling of state employees.

The Guyana Forestry Commission Bill is just anther example of post-CWC
ingratitude of the Government of Guyana that is driving this country
into a cul-de-sac of turmoil. Let us briefly describe April 2007. It
was a quiet period in which political stability reigned. Guyana hosted
the Rio Summit and there were no angry opposition protestors outside
the Convention Centre. No opposition party, not even the Justice for
all Party, attempted to show the visiting delegates that Guyana may
have an elected dictatorship.

The Rio Summit ran straight into CWC 2007. It was easy pickings for the
Government. No pickets; no demonstrations; no opposition denouncement;
no rude political commentary in the media. Everything was cool.

The Government was so satisfied with the Guyanese attitude to CWC 2007
that President Jagdeo himself praised the large contingent of
volunteers drawn from all ethnic communities.

The response the Guyanese people got for their warm reception to the
Rio Summit and CWC 2007 was a continuation of governance that is
excluding, incestuous and autocratic. Someone read too much of
Machiavelli who wrote that it is best for a ruler to be feared than
loved.

The months that followed the Rio Summit and CWC 2007 can be assessed as
a period of unmitigated political chauvinism and relentless arrogance.
The balance sheet is frightening! Too frightening! It reads something
like this.

One--the rejection of the Freedom of Information Act as drafted by MP,
Raphael Trotman, based on the version the Indian Government has. It has
to be irritating to the citizens of any country to hear their
government say that they are not interested in one of the foundations
of modern democracy – The Freedom of Information Act.

To deny the relevance of this type of institution to a modern
government is equivalent of saying that people in a country are not
entitled to know what their elected leaders are doing.

If ruling politicians feel this way, then, overthrow the constitution,
rule by decree and declare a state of emergency. But if you prefer the
democratic way of appealing to citizens to vote for you, then you have
to give them democratic institutions by which a modern, open and free
country is run.

My inflexible, indomitable belief is that the government of any country
that does not enact a Freedom of Information Act has no right to be in
power and the people that voted for them should recall them.

Two--the Guyanese people are not ready for the removal of the radio
monopoly because the enemies of the ruling party might use the opening
up to preach incitement. It never occurred to the government that by
this belief it is admitting that after fifteen years in power and four
election victories, it has failed to capture the imagination of the
Guyanese people if by the licensing of private radio stations, it
expects the use of political mischief that is intended to harm the
social fabric of the nation.

Three-- the edict to cable operators to cease their transmissions

Four – the admission of the President that there are critics of his
government, which he deemed as sleaze balls, that he needs to cuss out
more often ( “cuss” was the word the President used).

Five -- the rushing of the High Court (Amendment) Bill which is bound
to lead to a re-thinking of the strategies of the opposition in its
relationship with the government.

Six – the despotic demand, as embodied in the Guyana Forestry
Commission Act that forestry employees must not divulge information
about the nature of their work.

Seven – the contemptuous rejection of the implementation of an African
Lands Commission.

Why this ungrateful state of mind by the Guyana Government after such a
cooperative period in April?

It simply boggles the mind to understand why the Guyana Government
wants to drift from one despotic policy to another that makes it
unpopular and alienates it from the population.

Something is wrong here. It just doesn't make sense. When Machiavelli
wrote his little political philosophy handbook, “The Prince” in which
he argued that a ruler will last longer in politics if he displays
arrogance and intolerance in his policies because when he is feared the
chances of plots against him are less, it was written for 16th century
Italian princes, and not for modern governments in the 21st century.

Why the Government of Guyana does not want to be loved but prefers to
follow the philosophy of Machiavelli is something that is bound to have
a terrible side-effect as the months wear on. It is not too late to
abandon Niccolò Machiavelli.