No media conferences  

May 02, 2024 Editorial

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Kaieteur News – We have a government in place since August 2020 and it has never held a post-cabinet media briefing. We have ministers holding very important portfolios who have never faced the press. We have a President who is hiding behind Facebook live and a Vice President who by his own action has acknowledged that what he puts out weekly is balderdash so he is ashamed to cover it with the official stamp- he hold his pressers at Freedom House.

We are highlighting this travesty a few days before the government regales us about its record as a “champion” of media freedom. If Ministers of the PPPC Government do not have the skills to face the press, at least they must have the guts. That is, to face the music and represent their portfolios persuasively, and take whatever comes on the chin. This is how an honest Government operates in a democracy of openness and accountability.

It is appalling that members of the Cabinet find it helpful to hide behind the protective skirts of the DPI. This makes their faces look tear-stained from fright, and smudged with many suspicions. If there is nothing to conceal, then every Minister has a duty to show that they are the real deal, that they are neither overwhelmed nor lost in the area for which they are responsible.  Cabinet Ministers are not water boys and girls, or highly paid shoe shine men and women.

The more ministers seek shelter under the Department of Public Information (DPI) umbrella, the clumsier, more pitiful, and shallower and more anxious they look. Undoubtedly, ministers are only human, and they are comforted by friendly, helpful, softball questions. Their hands are held, and their noses cleaned so that they look good when presented by the DPI to the Guyanese with their half stories, and clever cover stories.  What the DPI succeeds in doing is adding farce to spectacle resulting in usual government circuses.

When anybody has only the truth of facts and figures to present, and in the most powerful terms, they do not need the DPI barricade. They stand on their own feet like real men and real women, and say to their questioners: go ahead, fire away, we are ready.  This is what Ministers with a minimum of dignity, of self-respect, of pride would do, including the Hon. Minister of Natural Resources, mostly a no-show, a presence of scant substance, a shell that is overshadowed by events. Nobody has to serve as a crutch for Ministers, put words in their mouths; or be afraid that they will crumble when confronted with tough questions.  This is how real people and real leaders operate in the real world. There is none of this slinking away like scaredy kittens to the DPI safe harbour.  They stand their ground and stand for truth if they have it.

What happened to that standard?  Where did those kinds of men and women go? The people need to know, they are owed, and they deserve to be served by those who hold vital portfolios.  At times, those interests may call for incredible dedication to duty, or honesty and integrity of a kind never before asked for in Guyana. The Ministers who handled themselves impeccably well on both counts should have no fear, know no barriers, to their being able to stand in front of the independent, mainstream media and speak to truth.  Truth does not duck and dodge and dance around cleverly.  Truth needs no escape valve, no exit strategy, no DPI. Truth and fairness and what is right shouts from the rooftops, and neither of those three essentials (truth, fairness, and right) runs away and hides under the bed of the DPI.

What our Ministers are doing is a disgrace. It makes them look dodgy and tricky. Once a Minister is clean and about managing his portfolio in the right way, there is no need for the gimmick of the DPI, the media ‘backtrack’ of a protective Government provision. A real Minister, one who has been true and faithful in his or her duty to Guyanese, would recoil from any backdoor arrangements like the DPI.  In fact, there would be sharp anger at such an arrangement, the stealthy character of such a convenience, and a bona fide Minister would tell whoever came up with such media trick to take it and shove it. Since we do not have any Minister objecting to this DPI setup, the door to speculation is flung open as to what they may have done, and which necessitated why they need to hide.  Surely, they cannot be this limited that their hands have to be held.  Surely, they cannot be this neck deep possibly in the dark and dirty that leaders do not trust them to the full exposure of mainstream media, and its hard questions.

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• Conferences, cover, Facebook, Freedom House, media

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