Latest update April 3rd, 2025 7:31 AM

Guyana's largest selling daily and New York's most popular weekly

Latest News

How Kaieteur News saved my environment two weeks ago

Dec 13, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In November 2010, cleaning crews from the Ministry of Works began to clear the trench on the southern side of the Railway Embankment just outside where I live. My home is the second one from the west. If the crews started from the west, then my part of the trench would naturally be the second one to have the bushes removed. In fact they started from the west.
After the two-day exercise was over only one home was untouched with its bush still flourishing – my own. It was scientific and management stupidity of the worse type to start the first yard, skip the second, go to the third, fourth, fifth till you reach the end. Why skip the second? But that is exactly what happened. It meant the only explanation was that my side was deliberately omitted.
Kaieteur News ran front page photographs for three days and Mr. Benn’s crew came on Day 3 and cleared the only remaining part of the trench. Life is instructive if you study it. While they were at work, my wife and I were on the verandah having breakfast. By that time, they had done house number one, skipped me at number two and had cleared houses three, four and five.
I told my wife that the government is so morbidly narrow-minded that I believe it left out our part of the trench. She shrugged it off and said that she doubted it because no one can be that petty; she reasoned that it wouldn’t take much effort to clear our part if the aim is a complete exercise.
An honest, decent person could never bring himself to believe that a government of a country could be so incredibly petty. But it happened and it showed the true nature of the leadership of the PPP.
Last week the crew was back. It started from the west as in 2010. House number one was worked on, then, they moved to house number two which is mine. All was well that ended well. But why did they behave professionally this time? The power of the press. For three days the Kaieteur News front-paged the narrow-mindedness of the government in that 2010 episode.
I received mail from Guyanese as far away as Ireland, India and Sweden telling me how shocked they were when they saw those pictures of the un-cleaned trench in front of my home.
So sickening was this tale of the harrowing consequences of naked power that at the time it was the number one conversation for most people in Georgetown. And it would have been so in any other country.
The debacle reached the halls of Parliament where senior leaders in the PPP denied their petty-minded sickness.
In 2014, I was spared the victimization because the little gods are gearing up for a national election and a repeat of those front page pictures of power and spite will not go down well with Guyanese, no matter whatever ethnicity or party or social class they belong to.
I am totally convinced and will remain convinced that very few PPP supporters, if any, accepted what occurred outside my home in November 2010. Human beings are not that heartless. So in 2014, the role of the media played its priceless part in protecting a citizen from the pangs and fangs of leaders who willingly abuse their power.
It is unimaginable what would have happened to this country if the free press had succumbed under Jagdeo. It is too frightening to contemplate. Knowing that the independent press stood between him and the ruin of Guyana, Mr. Jagdeo relentlessly pursued the two independent dailies.
Mr. Jagdeo withdrew state advertisements from the Stabroek News to cripple it. At one of the official dinners of the Guyana Manufacturing Association, Mr. Jagdeo made an angry call to the business community to boycott the Kaieteur News. This same president sued both the KN and SN for libel for different reasons.
Whatever freedoms of this country still possesses, they have remained in existence, as a result of the phenomenal bravery of the private media. There was a time under Mr. Jagdeo’s Presidency when people would cynically deride the opposition by saying that the real opposition to the PPP’s hegemony was the independent press.
No one has done the research and perhaps we will never know, but the instances must have been countless under Mr. Jagdeo and now under his hand-picked successor, Mr. Ramotar when the independent press must have saved large numbers of citizens the wrath of the government through relentless exposure of arrogance, bullyism and spitefulness. The people of this country owe the independent press a permanent debt.

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show|| March, 31st, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

 

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Rotary Club of New Amsterdam Childhood Obesity Prevention Inter Secondary School Tapeball Cricket competition continues

Rotary Club of New Amsterdam Childhood Obesity Prevention Inter...

Apr 03, 2025

Kaieteur Sports- When the competition continued there were action at the Rose Hall Community Centre in East Canje and the Berbice High School Grounds. There were wins for Berbice Educational...
Read More
Demerara beat Berbice by 6 wickets after Apple half-century blitz

Demerara beat Berbice by 6 wickets after Apple...

Apr 03, 2025

DCB Under19 Inter-Association Cricket Tournament 2025 begins

DCB Under19 Inter-Association Cricket Tournament...

Apr 03, 2025

Tagore Memorial Secondary School benefits from cricket gear, courtesy of the Bheer family

Tagore Memorial Secondary School benefits from...

Apr 03, 2025

Hurricanes knock Eagles off course despite Anderson gritty 77*

Hurricanes knock Eagles off course despite...

Apr 03, 2025

Peter’s Hall, Herstelling ‘A’ advance to EBDCA Division II 40-Over semis

Peter’s Hall, Herstelling ‘A’ advance to...

Apr 03, 2025

Features/Columnists

Publisher’s Note

Freedom of speech is our core value at Kaieteur News. If the letter/e-mail you sent was not published, and you believe that its contents were not libellous, let us know, please contact us by phone or email.

Feel free to send us your comments and/or criticisms.
Contact: 624-6456; 225-8452; 225-8458; 225-8463; 225-8465; 225-8473 or 225-8491.
Or by Email: [email protected] / [email protected]

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]