Freddie Kissoon – One radio station sixty years ago

May 21, 2008 Freddie Kissoon

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It is vitally important to the next generation that those who shaped the past should write about it. Three names come up; Ashton Chase, Janet Jagan and Eusi Kwayana. All three are in their middle eighties with the first two going close to their nineties. On October 20 this year, Mrs. Jagan will be 88.
Younger than them but with crucial parts of Guyanese history locked away inside their minds are people like Ranji Chandisingh, Moses Bhagwan, Dr. Joshua Ramsammy. We need to read about Guyanese history from the perspective of these people.

When it comes to Chandisingh, I doubt that we will hear from him. He cannot write about the past and omit details of the murder of Vincent Teekah. Obviously, readers will question the credibility of his manuscript if the Teekah circumstances are not examined. And Mr. Chandisingh will not talk about Teekah’s death.

Moses Bhagwan will write one of the absorbing books to have come out of Guyana if and when he puts pen to paper. Walter Rodney is the finest mind Guyanese politics has produced. Forbes Burnham is the more perceptive politician than all of them. Cheddi Jagan is the most morally admirable leader Guyana has given birth to. Rupert Roopnarine is the best in terms of articulation. Eusi Kwayana is the embodiment of political honesty. But I think Bhagwan has a keen mind that combines a little bit of all the qualities I have listed above.

Of them all, Mrs. Jagan is still writing. She has a weekly column in the PPP paper, the Mirror, for which she is editor-in-chief. She has chalked up the distinction of being perhaps the world’s longest serving editor-in-chief. Although one must qualify that by saying, that of a narrow, party newspaper not a mainstream media outfit.

I do not know when she became editor-in-chief but I know that in the early seventies she held that post and has done that up to this day, although the paper has a day-to-day editor. Unfortunately her columns are taken up more with American affairs and current stories in Guyana. However, last week I read a curious piece by her.

Because of the Mirror’s extremely limited circulation (about two thousand weekly which is not sold by the usual vendors), a majority of newspaper readers would have missed out on that piece. It was a learning experience. The article was about the media in the forties under the colonial administration.
She tells us that there was one radio station only and it was owned by Bookers and Fogarty’s and subsidised by the Governor’s budget. She went on to add that this one radio station was the voice of the colonial administration and it shut out any other alternative or competing views.

When I read this description, I wondered about the embarrassment Mrs. Jagan was opening herself to.
The first thought was why did the editor allow such a viewpoint to be published knowing what the reaction will be from social commentators? But of course Mrs. Jagan is editor-in-chief. The logical conclusion of anyone that read that historical reflection of Mrs. Jagan is; what has changed from the forties?

Sixty years ago, this country had one newspaper which was financed by the colonial government and it only broadcast what the government wanted to be aired. In 2008, Guyana has one radio station, a state of affairs that has gone on since the seventies. This radio station, like the Government’s newspaper, the Chronicle, is financed exclusively by the state that makes sure it broadcasts only state news.

So what have we got? The colonials allowed one radio station only. The post-colonials permitted one radio station only. So what is the question? It is this: What has changed sixty years since 1940? Missing from Mrs. Jagan’s evaluation was the reason why the Governor permitted one radio station only. But it is not hard to read his mind and those of the owners of Booker’s and Fogarty’s.
They all probably reasoned that; “If we give time to these natives to go on air, they will preach anti-government incitement.” Let us recap what Prime Minister Sam Hinds publicly proclaimed last year. He opined that Guyana is not ready for the opening up of the radio spectrum because of what happened in Rwanda.

Simply put, PM Hinds was echoing the sentiments of Governor, Sir Charles Woolley, his Treasurer, Frank Mc David and Mr. Frederick Seaforth, head of Booker’s. If they had consented to this one radio station being put at the disposal of people like Cheddi Jagan, his wife and others in the Labour Party (the political organization to which Dr. Jagan belonged in the forties), then they would have encouraged agitation against the government.

So what has changed? Nothing! What Sam Hinds meant is identical to what Woolley felt. What was Mrs. Jagan thinking when she wrote that piece in the Mirror?

There is an explanation of course. PPP leaders would respond by saying that in the forties, the colonial administrators were people that didn’t have the Guyanese people’s welfare in mind. In today’s Guyana, the PPP would say, we have our own local leaders who love the Guyanese people and have their interest at heart.

No one of course would accept that reasoning. The story of one radio station sixty years ago tells us so much about unchanging history. The whites left, the locals took over but the nature of power remains the same.

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