APNU+AFC Ministers are using the songbook of the PPP

Apr 06, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

After the government got into power, I began to receive hundreds of complaints from people about the backward, insensitive, elitist attitude of Ministers. This ranged from the working class citizen, the white collar worker, the middle class person, and the entrepreneur, both large and small. Mr. Glenn Lall, the publisher of this newspaper, told me that Joe Harmon did not return his call. Businessmen told me the same about several other ministers.
I was so moved at the mistreatment of businessman, Anthony Sarjoo, that I wrote a column on the issue. I got to know Mr. Sarjoo because one day during the 2015 election campaign, I walked into his office with a delegation of AFC youths and sought a donation of smart phones for the AFC’s campaign office. He gave willingly.
I got an ocean of complaints about then Junior Housing Minister, Keith Scott. Some were awful and they came from people from different walks of life, including persons in the WPA and Lincoln Lewis from the TUC.
It was Dr. David Hinds who told me that an AFC big wig said on Chris Ram’s television interview programme that people like me and David want to bring back the PPP in power because of the criticisms we were making. I couldn’t believe it. I went to view the recording myself. A careful reading of the semantics of the APNU-AFC kings and queens would reveal that it comes straight out of the songbook of the PPP.
The examples are mountainous and space would not allow for an enumeration. But both AFC and PNC top personnel are the perpetrators. For now, the latest example should suffice. It comes from Minister Ronald Bulkan. He did the unthinkable. And the unthinkable came straight out of the Freudian notebook of PPP leaders. It goes like this – “The government owns all public spheres; we are in charge and you do what we say.” This is the culture of successive governments from 1957 to the present.
Minister Bulkan did to the Chronicle what he would not dare contemplate, for even a fraction of a second, to do to any private media house. In a letter to the Chronicle, he wrote to complain that a particular day’s front page lead story should have been on the swearing in of the mayors and deputy mayors rather than on oil. Here is the Minister in his own words; “On 2017.03.30, the mayors and deputy mayors of the nine municipalities were sworn in… in your issue of 2017.03.31, you reported on the above activity, but relegated it to page eight.
Your front page is dominated by the headline: “More Oil” and was followed by a full-page story on page three. I wish to suggest that your emphasis and message are totally misplaced. I suggest, therefore, that your public duty would have been better served by switching the aforementioned articles.”
Important to note is that the Minister wanted a lead story of an event for which his ministry was responsible. So the Chronicle’s public duty is based on the minister’s interpretation of reality in Guyana, not on the requirements of journalistic judgement. This is straight out of the political diary of Bharrat Jagdeo and all other PPP leaders.
So why did the minister do such an unwise thing? Because for him, it is the Chronicle’s public duty to serve the government. The principles of journalism come later.
Can one imagine what is going to flow next? Each minister is going to tell the paper what is its public duty. If the Education Ministry doesn’t get its front page lead, the paper lapsed in its public duty. If the Health Ministry does get its event as the main story, the Chronicle doesn’t know its duty. This is what the Chronicle has become – a paper to serve the ministers of government. The Minister obviously didn’t have the kind of respect he ought to have for some people on the board of the paper, or else he would not have written that letter.
But respect is only given when you respect yourself. And I am not sure the Chronicle’s board is entitled to any respect. One member of its board, Imran Khan, openly published a complete fabrication about me knowing it to be false.
In another column, I will analyse the last part of Minister Bulkan’s missive that went like this; “Our priorities should continue to be trying to achieve national unity, social cohesion, good governance and creating stronger and more effective national institutions.”
This is coming from the Minister who supported the worst contract that was ever signed since Plato wrote his philosophical masterpiece ‘The Republic’ more than 2,000 years ago – the parking meter document.

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