David De Caires and 34 radio stations

Nov 10, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I sat in the very last pew of the Brickdam Cathedral of the Roman Catholic Church with my childhood friend from Wortmanville, Malcolm De Freitas. The occasion was the funeral service for David De Caires. The acoustics of that church is totally unacceptable. How can the church tolerate such an unpleasant situation?

At the back, you cannot hear even one word that is spoken by the speakers on the mike up front. That is an anomaly that was visible to anyone who attended a funeral service in that Cathedral. I could not believe that that intolerable situation has been allowed to exist for all these years. I waited in my seat for the mourners to leave, and when Joycelyn Dow passed by, she politely advised me that I should write about the Cathedral’s public address system. To use a mild description, it is very, very poor.

I watched as the people walked past me, and there, in front, were a number of PPP leaders and highly placed Ministers of Government. Where were these people when David De Caires was shocked into seeing the unbelievable happen to him – the vindictive attack on his newspapers by the withdrawal of state placements for almost eighteen months? As I wrote in my article two Sundays ago in this newspaper under the caption, “David De Caires: An Appreciation,” David, like all of us, had his faults, some of which really irked me when I was a weekly columnist for his newspaper; but that was absolutely nothing in comparison to the value the Stabroek News under David brought to this country.

David De Caires was indeed a member of the light-complexioned, wealthy elites that dominated British Guiana until 1968. He never left that world. But he never used that world in any ostentatious way. His attachment to that type of society was private and personal. It didn’t interfere with his commitment to Guyana’s freedom.

Quite the opposite, David De Caires fought for a free Guyana, not for his type of class belonging, but for all Guyanese. David had a temperament that allowed him to be a non-authoritarian figure. It came from his inherent belief in liberalism.

This explained why he was the more democratic partner in the twin-association with his long-standing friend Miles Fitzpatrick. When both of them returned to Guyana, David turned to the liberalism of the United Force of Peter D’Aguair, while Fitzpatrick went into the communist PPP. Any first-year university student will tell you that communism and fascism are two sides of the same coin.

They are essentially authoritarian ideologies. De Caires was more tolerant of me, more understanding, but Fitzpatrick was the Stabroek editor that had less patience for dissenting views. He was the reason I stopped writing for the newspaper. I will always remember the persistent defence of David De Caires in opposition to the incessant calls to drop me. In the end, he agreed with his Anglo-Saxon peers, and I refused his offer to return after a period of what he called “review.”

The mistreatment of the Stabroek News by the ruling party was a cruel blow to David De Caires. For a man who made a priceless contribution to the democratic opening up of this country, it was an unconscionable and heartless thing to do. David De Caires did not deserve such harsh treatment. He was not a propagandistic editor who rallied against the government of the day. He was a decent, professional editor.

Did it accelerate his deteriorating condition? I cannot give a definitive answer; I am not a medical doctor. But I will embrace the layman’s view when these things happen. John Public usually feels that stress situations tell on people’s hearts.

The consensus of opinion is that the enormous disappointment of Joseph O’Lall with the PPP for the failure of the PPP to give him justice after he was fired by President Jagdeo caused his fatal heart attack. John Public may be wrong, but he is entitled to his viewpoint. The power-wielders went to bid David goodbye at the Cathedral. Some of them (not Nagamootoo) even wrote eulogies in the letter section of his newspaper.

The people with power used that power to try to kill De Caires’s paper, yet they had the temerity to go to his funeral service and write glowing tributes to him in the newspapers. When and where will this shamelessness end? David De Caires didn’t live to see more than one radio station in Guyana. I know he found that abominable.

Do you know that in Trinidad there are 34 private radio stations? Do Guyanese know this? Goodbye, David. Once I write a newspaper column, wherever I am, I will remember you. I always will!

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David De Caires and 34 radio stations

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