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Four years and still waiting

Jan 20, 2025 Editorial, News

Editorial

Kaieteur News-  The President Irfaan Ali administration last Friday unveiled its final budget for the five-year term. Trillions of dollars have been expended thus far and more will be spent this year. And even as the president pushes for reelection, it is worth reminding that for a government that boasts of being transparent, it is astonishing that it has never held a post-cabinet media briefing for over four years. Not only has his government discarded post-cabinet briefings, but it also has not replaced it with any structured forum to update the media and the public about the workings of the administration.

In addition to disclosing the number of contracts that the government gave its no-objection to, post-cabinet media briefings are important ways for the administration to communicate with the public about its policies and priorities. At the moment, what the public is served with are random facebook lives by President Ali and the infamous weekly political press conferences being hosted by Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo at the PPP/C’s headquarters- Freedom House. As such, policies are rolled out in an adhoc manner as the President and Vice President move from village to village. Billions of dollars in contracts are handed out to firms- like the Hits and Jams boys without the media being able to ask questions and programmes are launched with similar opaqueness. That’s not how a ‘transparent’ government runs the affairs of a country, but it has been happening for over four years now in Guyana.

Since early 2021 President of the Guyana Press Association (GPA), Nazima Raghubir had raised the issue with government to resume post-Cabinet press briefings and to have more frequent engagements with the press. At the time President Ali had acknowledged the call by the GPA president and explained that the government had been very busy, and that Cabinet had been meeting frequently, multiple times per week. He, however, had committed to resuming the post-Cabinet briefings and to have more engagements with the press. That was 2021, we are now in 2025 and the briefings have not resumed.

The PPP/C while in opposition had said much about President David Granger not holding media conferences, but at least every week without fail his government kept the media updated on important policy positions and decisions. At the moment, the one forum where journalists can guarantee some response to burning questions is the weekly Freedom House cuss-down show, where reporters and their media houses are degraded and important questions about the affairs of this country are trivialised. We have editorialised before on how suffocating those weekly briefings are and that they can hardly be relied on to inform the nation about government policies and programmes.

The question therefore must be asked 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 in conversations 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 four years.

Instead, what we frequently see is the President and his senior comrades scurrying over to the friendly arms of the private media or helpless state media agencies. This 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 and his vice president should be aware that those pretenders for professional media practitioners do not count for anything in thoughtful, constructive, and respectable circles. They should know that those fly-by-night presences insult both them and their government in that they register in a certain discreditable way to them. 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.

(Four years and still waiting)

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