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The Stabroek News and Guyana’s inexplicable psyche

Feb 15, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

One of the themes of my political activism and my social commentary over the decades is that this country is instinctively authoritarian. The evolution of this mentality can be traced to the effects of colonialism, an explanation of which cannot be adumbrated here. Throughout my public life, whether in politics, in the professional workplace or in my media work, I have pointed to oceans of hypocrisy, immorality and unjust conduct among Guyanese who have taken the high ground in criticizing undemocratic policies in the exercise of governance.
As an activist in the Working People’s Alliance, I was quite outspoken about disappointing behaviour among my political colleagues. As a political activist, I never spared the opposition PPP for its hypocrisy. It got me thrown out of the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy (PCD). I remember one Sunday, Tacuma Ogunseye and Dr. Josh Ramsammy turned up at my home in Wortmanville to inform me that in the best interest of WPA – PPP camaraderie, I should stand down as one of the WPA’s representatives to the PCD. I did so because it was not advice but a WPA decision.
This has been my life, an independent critic. The columnist Peeping Tom calls it a lonely life. I am not a solitary figure and I don’t perceive myself as being a lonesome human. You certainly run the risk of being alienated by the society if you are independent in your commentary. And I would agree many, many sections of this society would prefer not to know me or have me around. The essential point to note is that I am committed to what I have done and am doing, and I am not unhappy about it. What has all of this got to do with the caption of this article?
For those who want to see the nature of this society and how we hold others to higher values but we do not do that for ourselves, let me quote a section of the Editorial of the Stabroek News yesterday, which is about the location of an intelligence agency in the Castellani House compound.  The paper wrote; “It was Mr. Harry Hergash writing in our edition of February 10, who succinctly outlined the arguments as to why building something of this kind in proximity to the nation’s leading centre of arts and culture is quite inappropriate.” What the Stabroek News is in effect telling its readers is that Mr. Hergash was the first person to perceive this aesthetic atrocity and to comment on it. I refuse to believe that the Stabroek didn’t know that three days before Mr. Herhash penned his small letter in that newspaper I devoted an entire Sunday column in the Kaieteur News to this topic titled; “Moral symbolisms and unintelligent government.”
The editors of the Stabroek News read the other dailies because the Stabroek News has boldly proclaimed that it does not publish letters that have already appeared in other newspapers. Commonsense would tell you then that its editorial management goes through the other newspapers. I need to point out that I do not need to be quoted by the Stabroek News.  This newspaper claims that it will submit to a survey to determine circulation. I am certain it knows what will be the results of a survey in terms of the circulation of my Kaieteur News column. Important to note is that the gentleman, Harry Hergash is an avid reader of my columns and quite often in the past has replied to many of my points. Let me say most unambiguously, no one can convince me that the person who wrote that editorial had no knowledge of that Sunday column of mine.
My contestation is that the Stabroek News was being shamelessly unethical when it wrote in that editorial yesterday that it was Mr. Hergash who initiated commentary on the intelligence agency in Castelllani House compound. There is a larger story here and a larger picture. It is the tragedy of Guyana. The Stabroek News would have been the first to write that an award was offered to a PPP person and not the most eligible applicant. This very newspaper has refused to acknowledge the idea of someone it doesn’t like. It is all right for the Stabroek News to dislike others but the Government cannot do the same. In other words, the Government must be kept to a higher principle but not the Stabroek News. I stopped being a columnist in 1994 for the Stabroek News because of the tragic, inherent authoritarian instinct that has so destroyed this nation beyond recognition.

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