Government and the press

Jan 09, 2025 Editorial, News

---

Editorial…

Kaieteur News- Every week this newspaper and its publisher are at the receiving end of the vilest abuse by the Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo at his news conference.

His attack on the press at this forum is sometimes not just restricted to the Kaieteur News, but also the Stabroek News. Today reporters who care to attend his weekly conference at Freedom House will hear about everything under the sun. Endless talks about the PNC, the AFC, this newspaper’s Publisher, Glenn Lall, Chartered Accountant, Christopher Ram, Columnist, GHK Lall, International lawyer, Melinda Janki and Former EPA head, Vincent Adams, and anyone else who dares to point out the flaws and faults in the country.

Every week, he is stuck on the same old tune: what the PNC did 40 years ago, what he saved Guyana from, and what he is supposedly doing now to uplift the country and its people. Every week, we hear about his plans to build 12 hospitals, a harbour bridge, 2,000 miles of roads and schools. It is like a never-ending checklist of projects, but when it comes to the mismanagement of our resources—our oil wealth especially—it is as if Guyana is a cassava and eddoe plantation, not an oil or gold producing nation. We hear nothing about the billions flowing out of this country: no accountability, no transparency, no answers. And when questions are put to him about these issues, you get no meaningful answers.

This newspaper is attacked both for our editorial position and reporting. We at Kaieteur News are not surprised. Anyone familiar with the history of democracy would know, that journalism played a pivotal role in the struggle of the ordinary people against the absolutist monarchies that were the norm in the 19th century. Since that time, the press in every democracy has guarded its role as the watchdog of the interests of the people against the ever-present danger of abuse of power by the “Leviathan”. We are following an honourable tradition.

Even in the US and Britain, bastions of liberal democracy, there has always been a tension between the government and the press – with the former persistently accusing the latter of overstepping its bounds. We have seen and heard of the aggression by incoming US President Donald Trump.

Bill Moyers, regarded as one of the most credible figures in American journalism and one who served in the White House during the Vietnam War, once said: “In the White House we circled the wagons, grew intolerant of news that didn’t comfort us and, if we could have, we would have declared illegal the sting of the bee.”

Here in Guyana, even though the governing party has been around for decades it does not appear that its leaders have learnt the lesson that the people’s right to know can be trumped by very few imperatives in a functioning democracy. Even a US President was forced to demit his office because of the press’ fidelity to its cause.

As Moyers continued, “The First Amendment (the right to freedom of speech) is the first for a reason. It’s needed to keep our leaders honest and to arm the powerless with the information they need to protect themselves against the tyranny of the powerful, whether that tyranny is political or commercial.”

In Guyana, our Constitution also declared that we have freedom of speech and we would indeed be derelict in our duty if we did not report the facts as we discern them rather than bend them to the agenda of the government of the day. We know that in the grand flow of history of nations, Guyana is a comparatively young democracy. For most of our history we had a commercial press that mirrored the positions of the colonial power and denied the legitimate right of the citizenry to become aware of the facts that created the chains of their bondage. However, from the abolition of slavery there were brave attempts at creating a free press that would lift the scales from the eyes of the masses. We position ourselves firmly in the latter position.

As we have pointed out on so many previous occasions, the government has nothing to fear from the truth, if it or any of its agencies are not covering up that truth.  In a democracy, the “consent of the governed” must be an informed consent and it is the task of the press to present the facts that will inform the citizenry – especially as it relates to the activities of the state to which they have conferred so much power. In the criticisms directed at this newspaper by the government’s top leaders and even other representatives, we detect a level of hubris that belies the social contract that undergirds all democratic states, which declares those representatives to be “servants of the people”. We suggest that they heed the lessons of history.

(Government and the press)

---

• Glenn Lall, Government, honourable tradition, PNC, the AFC, the press

---