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A credible threat against Kaieteur News

Aug 26, 2011 Editorial

 

Governments are known to respond, sometimes in a hostile manner, to naked criticisms of its operations. They always portray the impression that they are doing what is best for the people; that they know what a country needs and dispense these needs in an equitable manner; that the people for the greater part are happy with the performances by the governments.
However, the press always examines the performance of governments and sometimes they find some remarkable things. In many countries, reporters will find some illegalities and conflicts of interest; they would find cases of nepotism and even naked corruption.
Finding these things is one thing, exposing them is another.  A good reporter, having made the discoveries, would go to the source of the problems with searching questions. They seek explanations, and even though the explanations may not hold water, the reporter is by duty bound to report them alongside his/her findings.
In Guyana, knowing the way the government would respond to criticisms, print media often drop the story from the pages but would talk to people. Pretty soon the spit press is circulating these reports.  Anger swells and people become frustrated because they have no outlet to challenge what passes for government.
In some countries riots blossom, but in the more stable countries the people merely protest. In those that have presses that open their pages, then we see the frustration translated into letters to the press.
Kaieteur News, for a long time, had to cope with the reports and complaints from the people who had hard evidence that there was a lot wrong. Being a responsible paper, it spoke to the people implicated and attempted to advise them about correcting the image floating about the country.
Eventually things reached the stage where the newspaper had to take the bull by the horns and expose the irregularities. Each week there were announcements of award of contracts. These were invariably high and warranted investigation. For example, there was no announcement of the $1.5 million contract for the pound at the Grove/Diamond Police Station.
This pound collapsed and the images were broadcast in the pages of Kaieteur News. The next day the police reported that high winds had knocked down this pound. Experts say that the open nature of the pound made it extremely unlikely that high winds could have knocked it down. It was offering no resistance to any wind.
There were roads that attracted hefty sums for rehabilitation but which collapsed soon after. Kaieteur News undertook to criticize the quality of the work and the dishonesty of the contractors and the engineers who gave their stamp of approval to the shoddy works.
This prompted a look at all contracts, right to the point of publishing them for free in the newspapers. Many things were discovered. There appeared to be no set policy for the award of contracts. Some were awarded to the highest bidders, while some were awarded to the lowest. In some cases, the contractor was most often offered the contract whether he submitted the lowest or the highest bid.
We commented on the Supenaam/Good Hope stelling which gobbled up huge sums of public funds and remained non-functional. The government, instead of applying the penalty clauses, simply put more money into the stelling. There has been no condemnation.
Repeated condemnation of such government expenditure has taken a toll. There are now threats against the newspaper. There have been threats before. One columnist was attacked in the streets and there have been the blogs that contained some of the most scurrilous attacks against people perceived to be hostile to the government.
In fact, it was the very government that labeled some sections of the media as opposition media. But for all that, President Bharrat Jagdeo insisted that he would uphold freedom of the press. So we must now question this most recent threat of seeking to prosecute some members of the newspaper for whatever the government considered a crime committed perhaps decades ago.
We know that the government has used the legal option to attack sections of the press. Even now President Jagdeo is in court to challenge a report in this section of the media. But he himself has publicly made damning charges against media people, knowing that he is above prosecution.
Will Kaieteur News buckle? Not likely.

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