Cabinet media briefings

May 07, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – President Irfaan Ali has said that his government is accessible at all times. This national leader cannot be on the same planet as us. He needs to come down to earth, face the truth, and cease with this embarrassing defense of government media accessibility, its openness. He and his government must be of complete frankness about things that all Guyanese need to know. This hiding and hedging by the PPPC Government must halt.
It has been 641 days and there have been no cabinet media briefings (KN May 5). We think that the President can count as well as most Guyanese, so there should be no place for these tricky games that he plays. It is not whatever he says it is, but what the facts of the record point to, what shreds his rather futile claim, his weak defense.
What we speak of are post-cabinet media briefings. There has been none for almost two years now. Surely, the President must know that, and is familiar with a situation that does not speak well of either his leadership or his government. What is the PPPC Government afraid of, and what is its leaders going to great lengths to conceal? Oil is the talk of the town; and, indeed, it can be said that Guyana is the fascination of the world, and features highly inconversations of the entire investment community.
Oil has to be among the biggest things, if not the biggest one by far, on every agenda of the cabinet. Yet, the PPPC Government has not held any post-cabinet briefing for the lengthy period of 641 days. We have no interest in calling out the President and making him look bad; or why the reluctance to face independent, mainstream media. He and his senior comrades scurrying over to the friendly arms of the helpless state media agencies does not qualify as full-fledged post cabinet briefings. The same applies in the even more nauseating circumstances when top leaders and ministers seek the safe harbour of fawning, worshiping agents planted in private media.
The President should be aware that those pretenders for professional media practitioners don’t count for anything in thoughtful, constructive, and respectable circles. The President should know that those fly-by-night presences insult both him and his government in that they register in a certain discreditable way to him. Guyanese need to know the essences of what goes on in cabinet meetings since there is so much happening at this time. It cannot come in drips and drabs, and then through these side doors and backdoors, which make all Guyanese look foolish, without exception.
For his part, the President offered this platter of icing, “I would…say…that this government that I lead and this President that sits here, has been the most accessible government and President to the media any time of the day…” The first thing that we at this publication would say is that when anyone starts referring to himself in the third person (“this President”) then it is time to worry.
It is not a good sign, which has been observed from the antics and shambles of rock stars and sport stars who later fall apart. More sharply, the President has become a one-man cottage industry, a dictionary all by himself, in how he has remade the English Language to suit the narrow ends of his still narrower leadership outlook.
The President clearly doesn’t know when to stop, but charged ahead with “On the ground, that is where I am at home, that is where I feel comfortable…” It pains us to tell the President that salesmanship, propagandizing, and fluttering about among friendlies is not governing. They are not even about leading, or what makes officeholders “comfortable.” The President may not care, but an essential aspect of leadership and the presidency is being made uncomfortable, when things are suspect, when colleagues engage in slickness, when government dodges and ducks.
Post cabinet briefings would benefit Guyanese with a wealth of information. The PPPC Government has failed Guyanese in this regard. It is time for President Ali to get real and get started with post cabinet media briefings. They are not a favor given, but a duty to be done.