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Don’t cut me off! Don’t cut me off!

Apr 13, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I was a guest last Saturday evening of the television programme in Berbice hosted by Dr. Ramayya of the Alliance For Change. When it was time to take calls, one caller began by saying, “Please don’t cut me off. He kept repeating that plea so he spoke and attacked Dr. Ramayya. He had his say. He spoke glowingly of the PPP and assailed Dr. Ramayya’s parliamentary record. The point is that he had his say. He was allowed to express his viewpoint. He was given latitude to chastise Dr. Ramayya.
Dr. Ramaya then asked me to comment on what the gentleman said. My essential point was that what this man was requesting of us, his party in government does not allow others to do – criticize them on state media. One hopes that the caller would have understood the reason why he was not cut off – people should be allowed to freely express themselves.
The state media is not a PPP outfit. It is not a private media entity. It is administered by the Government on behalf of the Guyanese people. Yet the state owned NCN and Chronicle are caricatured vulgarities. In the 2011 election it was the most indecent use of the ruling party of a government entity ever seen in the history of this country.
Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine said that when he was in Zimbabwe for the purpose of monitoring the national elections in that country, the state media in Zimbabwe was not as manipulated as it is in Guyana. That is a nerve-wracking statement. Look how authoritarian is Zimbabwe yet the state media in Guyana is under more strangulation than in Zimbabwe.
The 2015 election coverage of PPP activities by the Chronicle and NCN has descended to even more miasmic levels than in 2011. This thing is beyond imagination. It is as if the Chronicle and NCN are PPP owned entities. This thing is so shocking that it calls for world-wide condemnation.
The chief of the OAS monitoring team for the election has stated that she would like to see the campaign avoid dirty and personalized politics. But this lady ought to zero in on the crass, immoral, illegal, depraved, abominable misuse of the state media by the PPP for the 2015 election campaign.
This vulgarity is so disgusting that it calls for a decisive intervention by the ABC countries and CARICOM. You open the papers everyday and the leads are on the PPP campaign. There has never been a lead on the opposition election activities.
To make matters more sickening is the fact that PPP candidates and leaders have begun a letter campaign in the Kaieteur News and the Stabroek News. It was started by Hydar Ally of the PPP Executive Committee and followed closely by Clement Rohee. Now Roger Luncheon is in the act. Here is a poisonous irony. These three men who are in the leadership of the PPP and who control the levers of power see it appropriate to ventilate their views in the private media but detractors and critics of the PPP cannot be seen on NCN television or be read in the Chronicle.
This is the party that cried to the Guyanese nation for over thirty years that the PPP couldn’t get its views in the state media when the PNC was in Government. Now it has been in government for twenty three years and it has done far worse than what ever took place in the days of the PNC.
It came as no surprise that the Media Monitoring Unit of the Election Commission has reserved the bulk of its castigation for the state-owned Chronicle and the PPP-aligned Guyana Times. “Kit” Nascimento referred to the Guyana Times as the New York Times of Guyana. When people read that they must have asked what was Nascimento drinking when he uttered that trash.
The leadership of the PPP for the past umpteen years has branded the private media – Kaieteur News and Stabroek News and other private televisions news and DemeraraWaves— as media houses that are unprofessional, scandalous and out to vilify the PPP. How do you square this with the report of the media monitor unit?
The simple fact is that for decades the PPP has been successful in obfuscating its collective evil mind not only in the use of power but in every aspect of national life. After twenty years they have been finally exposed. And history is about to get rid of them. The historical dismissal of the PPP will come after May 12, 2015.

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