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The concept of moral obligation does not offer Persaud and Misir the privilege of using KN
Dear Editor,
I am responding to Randy Persaud’s letter in the January 1st, 2010 in SN in which he responds to my adumbration that he and Prem Misir are in contradiction of the President’s desire to see a curtailment of the Kaieteur News by occupying space in the letter pages of that newspaper.
His January 1st publication is his second rebuttal, the previous being in the Kaieteur News (December 24). All he has done for the second time is to continue his propaganda evading a direct response to the peculiar situation. Furthermore in his January 1st piece, he continues in a shameless vein to eschew any discussion of the Chronicle but goes further by knocking the anonymity of GHK Lall in the SN and Peeping Tom in the Kaieteur News, when the Chronicle leads the way in nameless and faceless writers
In my reply to him of (December 27, Kaieteur News), I asked him to define his occupation. He chose not to in the SN letter of January. Dr. Persaud lived in Washington before coming to Guyana and he knows that it would be impossible for a White House staffer to be in the news and no one knows what his designation is. But he knows he can get away with these kinds of anomalies in Guyana, a banana republic.
I repeat, it is a moral contradiction for Persaud and Misir to use the medium of Kaieteur News when their boss sees the paper as having a negative purpose to his government and the country as a whole. The concept of moral obligation does not offer these two men the privilege of using Kaieteur News.
Persaud shifts ground and deliberately so. He now says he and Misir have a right to reply in Kaieteur News to criticisms of the Government. That was not my original argument. Both Persaud and Misir use the letter pages of Kaieteur News and SN not only to reply but also to publish their original thoughts.
First example, Misir reduces his Sunday column in Chronicle to a letter in Kaieteur News and he does that every week. Many of these columns-turned-letters are not on Guyanese politics. Misir must have seen the wisdom of using Kaieteur News as opposed to his boss’ view of the paper. This is the question I put to both men. Misir so far is silent.
I come now to the most egregious, nauseating and morally indefensible aspect of Persaud’s replies to me. First, he (and Misir) wants Kaieteur News and SN to be responsible and give more recognition to governmental positiveness.
No other word but nonsense can be used to describe this attitude. The Chronicle for the past 17 years under the PPP Government has not carried a column by a government critic, never had a front page devoted to opposition news and shuts out infamies committed by the Government
Secondly, Persaud’s charge against the anonymity of GHK Lall is utterly ridiculous. Persaud writes; “No one in and out of Guyana knows who GHK Lall is.” What adjective can we use to describe this perception? Hundreds, yes hundreds of fictitious names appear each year in the Chronicle letter pages and some of its pen name columnists have no imagination when you think of the fictitious signature they use – “Whispering Mabel”, “De Parrot’, Inspector Clousseau. Can Persaud or Misir tell us who these people are?
Thirdly, as someone who lived under the Burnham regime, I say most unapologetically, he had more morality and decency in him that would have caused him to intervene to stop the Chronicle from becoming the gutter newspaper that it now is. It has to be the most vivid example of hypocrisy in the last 100 years in this country that Misir and Persaud, two PR officials with the state, happily ensconced in the pages of the Chronicle can call upon the two independent dailies to be more responsible.
Someone either has no scruples or is just plain shameless to write for a gutter newspaper and in the same breath demand responsible journalism from the two leading independent media houses in this country.
I close with a question for Persaud: Does anyone in and out of Guyana know what title Dr. Randy Persaud holds in the public sector?
Frederick Kissoon
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