Fake facts
Liberal democracies depend, in the words of one reviewer, on a ‘collective trust in facts.’ While that collective trust is under assault all over the Western world, more particularly in the United States, with some exceptions it has never really existed in this country at all. There have always been two sets of ‘facts’, one generated by the PNC in its various incarnations, and the other by the PPP. Since only one side perceives itself as promoting the ‘truth’, the other side by definition must inevitably be ‘lying’, especially when political differences are at issue. This is not to say that one or the other side does not often have a correct grasp of some of the facts, if not most; it is simply to observe that this will often not be acknowledged by the opposing party which will postulate its own contradictory ‘truth’.
And it is not just the politicians who operate this way, but their supporters too. As far as they are concerned, the genuine facts are promulgated by whichever side they back; they look no further. As a consequence there is no such thing in the eyes of politicians and their backers as an impartial critic or a neutral commentator.
When an ‘objective’ judgement is required, recourse is usually had to the courts, but here again, both parties in government have sought to have their own candidates appointed as judges on the assumption that these will favour them when cases come before them. In other words, objectivity is not what they seek, but an official endorsement of their own ‘truth’. Having said that, justices will often exercise their independent judgement, as the coalition government found out to its cost in the recent election cases in the High and Appeal Courts. That, of course, has not stopped them, since Mr Clairmont Mingo simply ignored the High Court’s ruling and APNU+AFC still clings to his fabricated tabulation.
Where elections are concerned foreign observers above all others are the arbiters of what constitute objective facts, which is why they are so unpopular with autocrats. It is they who have confirmed the credibility of results in this country going back to 1992. We had an impressive array of them here on March 2nd, possibly because President Granger, who is now confirming his status as an unreconstructed authoritarian, did not expect to lose the poll. After it was clear to him that he had, the process by which a contrary set of facts could be created got underway.
Since all the overseas observers embarrassingly for the coalition were in agreement on the subject of the election and how the attempted fraud had been perpetrated, they had to be undermined. (No such compunction was felt in relation to local observers, because as already