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Jagdeo’s press conferences

Mar 23, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – We have a few questions that involve Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo’s press conferences held every Thursday at Freedom House or Office of the President.  Whose press conference, is it?  Who is in charge of it?  What is the role of Mikhail Rodrigues in the Jagdeo press conferences now deteriorated into all out press brawling from the vice president’s side of the microphone?  Is Rodrigues an employee of the State?  If so, what is he, a factotum, a water boy, a cheerleader, a screener of questions, or an unofficial abuser of press freedoms and press professionals in Guyana?  Is he Jagdeo’s unannounced public relations director and dirty jobs man that no other Guyanese would do?

Jagdeo is now the sole owner of a well-deserved reputation in this country.  He is widely recognized as Guyana’s abuser-in-chief for the word has spread all over.  This became evident from the issues and questions raised in the recent United Nations Human Rights session.  Jagdeo is so good at being an abuser and reviler that there is no need for the likes of a Rodrigues, but there he was cursing others so that he can continue collecting his cash, and proud to carry the dirty bags of the vice president.  While the press abuser-in-chief Bharrat Jagdeo carries on at the rate that he does, President Irfaan Ali, as commander in chief needs to pull hard on the reins.  The president should not stand by idly, and allow this practice to go on.  Whether he knows or doesn’t know the full details of the weekly press embarrassments to his administration is irrelevant. What is meaningful is that these diatribes and other forms of disgusting behavior by those associated with his governance team are being beamed around the world.  Both President Ali as leader and his presidency are now brought into serious disrepute.  He has to put his foot down and must not be an unconscious or unwilling party to the filth that comes out of almost all of these weekly press conferences.  If Jagdeo can neither find the standard, nor control his attack dogs, then President Ali has to step in and do so for him.

Frankly put, Jagdeo’s press gatherings can no longer be described as press conferences.  No self-respecting Guyanese, no principled citizen, would declare these as meeting with the press and sharing with the media for dissemination with the rest of Guyana.  We at this paper identify the Bharrat Jagdeo press conferences for what they have degraded to: press obscenities and press wars and press cuss downs.  They are virtual crimes against the independent media establishment in Guyana.  It is now a standing repugnance that this is what this former head of state now presides over shamelessly and without batting an eyelid.  In fact, many are asking if Jagdeo is not egging Rodrigues on, goading him to perform in a puppet role.  Why does Jagdeo lack confidence in himself so much, in what he represents, that he feels it necessary to accompany himself with props and sidekicks and the dregs from the bottom of the national barrel?  If he does not know enough about oil, then he should walk with somebody who knows about that commodity.  This oil wealth means too much to Guyanese today, and he owes all citizens a straight and clean story.  It is not necessary for Jagdeo to stain himself some more and besmirch the Guyanese people by having a hanger-on like Rodrigues as part of his press entourage.

He should give Rodrigues a real job and help him to appreciate the basics of professionalism, comportment, and participating in a civilized exchange.  Only animals resort to the grunting and grappling that have come to feature so prominently in the Jagdeo press bacchanal.  All that is missing now is a bottle of cheap rum, and some wine-down, yard music blaring at high volume, as accompaniment.  We have seen sickness of many kinds, but this is a political sickness of a rare kind, one that is unique to the PPPC Government.  At the end of the day, Jagdeo should be man enough to come out in the open and do his own dirty work, and not use Rodrigues as a front, a sleazy one.

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