Frank Anthony’s brush with Ruel Johnson

Feb 12, 2014 Letters

Dear Editor,
Ruel Johnson has been relentlessly like a thorn in the side of Minister of Culture Frank Anthony via his missives in our dallies, lambasting both the Government and more so the Minister for being incompetent, disingenuous and for other failures.
“As a national man of letters, it is not only my duty to engage in literacy activity to probe at the deeper problems which ail us, it is also my duty to actively challenge abusive authority, particularly when its leadership believe that they are above criticism as Anthony clearly does,” Johnson writes.
To the point where the Minister has been ruffled to declare; “The Man has become my lone critic I cannot recall any incident where I would have occasioned such hatred in this man’s heart….” He states further, “When in our midst we harbour persons of malicious spirit bent on destroying public trust and good will we must engage to restore in the public eye a sense of decency and good order”, and refers to Johnson’s missives as “irrational; malicious, divisive, distrustful and nonsensical rantings”. Quite a caustic and piercing mouthful of one certainly upset.
In the many issues surrounding the National Drama Festival which members who participated penned a letter: “manner in which many initiatives executed by Ministry of Culture undermines its efforts and frustrates creative community” S.N Jan 13th, 2014, of particular concern to me was the LICHAS complain: “Coming out of the festival, members of LICHAS Hall discovered that an annual subvention for the hall has been in the Ministry’s budget since 2008.
This would be great news if it weren’t for the fact that LICHAS Hall up until very recently knew nothing of the subvention and has no record of being in receipt of the funds allocated to them…”
But in the S.N of January 27th, 2014 the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Culture Alfred King said he was not aware of any annual subvention for LICHAS, that he was unaware that the LICHAS facility was in receipt of funds from the Ministry’s budget, and said further that if they knew about it they should have applied.
But the management committee of LICHAS couldn’t since they knew nothing of such, were never told, Mr Michael James, secretary of the committee said they only became aware of it after Cultural Minister Frank Anthony revealed it at the 2013 National Drama Festival Awards Ceremony. In discussing this matter with him (James) he said to me that he brought it to the attention of Mr James Rose, Director of Culture who said he knew nothing about subvention for LICHAS.
Let me say something about a number of unheard committees in parliament. I am told that there are a number of areas in which committees are set up to aid/assist legitimate individuals, groups, organizations etc. To which they can access funds-the arts being one-thing is, many people have no knowledge of such and some who are aware have no know-how to access them,
But the people making up those committees keep them secret, hardly inform anyone except friend and favoured ones. In discussing some of Ruel Johnson’s missives in which he has castigated the Minister for stagnating and short changing writers there were a few-not writers nor members of the arts-who think he (Johnson) is packing it a bit too much.
But I was told by another who attended the Awards Ceremony that the Minister made the assertion about LICHAS receiving monies yearly in a fit of annoyance, in response to the Director of the Festival Godfrey Naughton, before him noting that theatre out of Georgetown were not getting the kind assistance they deserved. And this Michael James has fully endorsed, saying that they-LICHAS Committee-has made several requests to Mr Anthony’s Ministry to no avail- never once a response.
Frank Fyffe

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Frank Anthony’s brush with Ruel Johnson

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