Latest update May 22nd, 2026 12:38 AM
Can someone give this man a lecture on moral rules?
My contention has been that the two Office of the President propagandists, Prem Misir and Randy Persaud, are not engaged in moral obligation to the President of Guyana and by extension the Guyana Government, because of their insistence to air their views, thoughts and ideas in the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News.
Two reasons explain this. First, the President has judged the private media as being the new opposition. Surely, no one can be that stupid to think he is referring to only two newscasts – Prime News and Capitol News.
Any person with commonsense would know that on the top of his accusatory list are KN and SN.
Secondly, Mr. Jagdeo unambiguously, using language that was direct and harsh at a dinner hosted by the business community, urged the Guyanese entrepreneurs not to place advertisements in the KN because the paper is harming Guyana by the nature of its journalism.
Misir himself repeats his boss’s contention by writing a letter published by this newspaper (KN, Feb 28) in which the argument is about the private media taking on the role of the opposition. Again I repeat; it is stupid for anyone to think in that letter Misir’s focus is only on the two television newscasts named above.
We must not fail to mention that Randy Persaud insulted President Jagdeo and the Government by sending an appeal to the Stabroek News asking that paper to give him space to address the Guyana Diaspora. Let me repeat; he directly appealed to the Stabroek News.
Here is the plea in Persaud’s own words; “Please allow me the use of this medium (Stabroek News) to communicate with the Guyaneese diaspora population (sic).
I would specially like to open up a conversation with Guyanese in the US and Canada, two countries that I have lived in for extended periods.”
Is this comical, laughable, pathetic or esoteric?
Here is a man that eulogizes the government he works for as a democratic state that has sound economic credentials and is supported by its population and most of all has a number of media houses under its control, one of which, the Chronicle, has a web page. Yet this man appeals to a private newspaper, one that his boss calls the new opposition and tried to weaken it by the withdrawal of government advertisements, to get his message across.
The analysis can only point in one direction – Persaud knows his government is unpopular and its newspaper is not read at all. He knows that the Guyana Diaspora prefers to read the “new opposition.”
Mr. Jagdeo is not a keen analyst of politics. If he was, he would have fired Persaud as soon as that letter came out.
Here is an example of the ongoing contempt Misir shows for his boss.
For the past six weeks, Misir takes his Sunday Chronicle column and reduces the column’s image by sending it as a letter to the “new opposition,” the Kaieteur News. This is not only an insult to President Jagdeo and the Chronicle.
No self-respecting columnist will ever do that and none has done it before since newspaper was invented. Why would you want to take the essay you write for your own newspaper and send it as a letter to your competitor? The Chronicle, KN, and SN are competitors.
Why would I send my columns as letters to Stabroek News?. Why would Ian Mc Donald reduce the credibility of his Sunday piece by having the Chronicle print it as a letter? The question that we should ask Misir is why he is so frenetic about getting his views over in KN? Is something wrong with the credibility of the Chronicle?
Now listen to this. Do accidents become a pattern? They cannot. Accidents are random occurrences. If one week, Misir’s Sunday Chronicle item appeared in the Sunday Kaieteur, how come that has been going on for six consecutive weeks?
If Misir wants he can sue me for libel and I will defend it but I am contending most vehemently that these consecutive publications of Misir’s Chronicle columns in the Sunday edition of this newspaper as letters are not random happenings.
Has Misir requested this? If the answer is yes, then what is Mr. Jagdeo’s interpretation of what Misir is doing?
In two recent letters to KN (Feb. 24, 28), Misir chides the private media for being the “new opposition”. So why is Misir pursuing such a strong presence in the new opposition? Why is he ridiculing his Chronicle column by soliciting constantly, its publication in the “new opposition?”
It looks like a lack of moral obligation to his boss.
Share this:
Discover more from Kaieteur News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.