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The answer

Oct 06, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

At the conclusion of the annual meeting of the Guyana Press Association last Sunday, a journalist put a question to me.

It centered on my Sunday column in which I looked at the plethora of anonymous letters in the Chronicle heaping fanatical praise on Mr. Jagdeo.

The journalist asked why didn’t I outline the reason for the writers not wanting to put their true identities below their letters. I think this is a valid point. But one must remember there is always space constraint when writing for a newspaper.

My experience as a newspaper columnist since 1988 is that readers prefer shorter offerings. I agreed to do an analysis of why the ghost writers want to hide. Here it is.

This same journalist asked me if I know about a pro-government discussion forum on the internet that has taken the same name as GINA. About a year back, I heard about GINA and went to look at it. I later discovered that GINA, the discussion forum, is run by GINA, the Guyana Government agency.

What is the point? The fictitious letter writers in the Chronicle and the pseudonyms on the other GINA are the same people. What the Guyanese people need to know is that there aren’t dozens of real persons sending in letters to the Chronicle praising the Government. It is a factory turning out pen-names by a small group of people.

These people are PPP leaders, Ministers of the Government and information officers at the state agency, GINA.

The strategy is to use a few hundred false names in the Chronicle so as to deceive people into think that there are citizens out there supporting the Government.

When it comes to the discussion forum on the internet, it is the same group that operates the letter factory. At the end of the day then, all these viewpoints that are glowing tributes to Mr. Jagdeo are penned by the Government itself.

I would like to think that by now, all the readers of the Kaieteur News and the Stabroek News know that it is just a few high-powered government officials that saturate the Chronicle’s letter pages.

In relation to the discussion forum named GINA, it wouldn’t make sense for the PPP leaders to put their real names because the logic as it applies to the Chronicle would be the same – people would look at who the writers are and the second they see who the identities are, they wouldn’t read them.

The headache the Government has is the moribund state of the Chronicle.

Now we are about to enter into bizarre waters. See what you think of my theory below and the irony that flows from it.

The Government has two columnists who are supposed to counter people like me, Christopher Ram, Dr. Tarron Khemraj and other critical writers. But the Government’s avenue, ironically, are the two independent dailies.

Take the new kid on the block, Dr. Randy Persaud. I don’t know if he is on leave from his job in the US or is now employed by the Government. The obvious thing about him is that he is a pro-government spokesperson. He has Chronicle, the Guyana Times and NCN at his disposal. But Randy is all over the letter pages of Kaieteur News and Stabroek News criticising even the very Stabroek News that publishes his daily pro-government praises.

Do you want a more powerful example of irony? Randy leaves the US to spin for Mr. Jagdeo and does it in two newspapers whose demise Mr. Jagdeo would gleefully welcome.

Dr. Prem Misir has wide territory at the Chronicle but he puts in an appearance quite often in the two independent dailies.

The sordid side to this irony is that Randy and Dr. Misir have their cake and eat it too. They operate in the Chronicle taking shots at the critics of the Government and the Chronicle refuses to publish the replies of those that Randy and Misir write about.

Randy and Misir are propagandising for the Government using the letter pages at the independent press. How ironic!

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