Press putdown, slur

Sep 13, 2025 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The returning PPPC Government has standards to aspire to, then maintain. Relative to the government’s relations and treatment of the press, it hasn’t conducted itself wisely, managed the partnership brightly. There is some truth in asserting that the government has done poorly in its interactions with the press. The section of the Guyana media that falls within the category of the independent media can point to different times and different situations, and hold those out as evidence of just how poor the government has been in dealing with the independent press.

We don’t know what is driving the leaders of the government up the proverbial wall. They delight in saying that Guyana is not North Korea, only for that claim to mock them due to their own actions. Why the PPPC Government is so anxious around the independent section of the local media is beyond us. Anxious people are those with secrets to hide. Nervous leaders in shaky governments who go on the attack must have much more to hide, the secrets that become a matter of life and death. So, anyone who comes too close with probing questions, or too much persistence, has to be putdown and put into a pigeonhole. ‘Opposition journalist’ serves as the government’s newest branding iron, a way to scar a journalist, bring into disrepute.

The PPPC Government went from a thin one-seat majority in parliament to a comfortable majority. Despite the low voter turnout, the ruling party didn’t simply scrape out a victory, it overpowered the opposition, old and new. Hence, when either the president or the vice president loses his cool and goes after independent minded media professionals, it is a source of bafflement. What is the point of all the leadership hostility? How can the naked aggression of the government against other Guyanese trying to do an honest job have any utility? It cannot be that President Ali or Vice President Jagdeo wants to be asked only what they are comfortable with, what they prefer to answer. There is nothing healthy about that for either leaders who prioritize clean governance, or the ethics of the Fourth Estate. The setup questions, the prearranged traps, do more than embarrass the objects of leadership kindnesses. They make leaders who thrive on such friendly circumstances and the farces that support those looking lesser than they are. And they give the independent media professionals more openings, more bases, to continue to dig, since anything could be unearthed.

Because the true journalist operates with an idea at the back of his or her head: where there is smoke, there is fire. Moreover, if there’s nothing to a question or a position, then it backfires to make a big production out of an encounter. In other words, the more that the president or the vice president or a minister develop some fire in their eyes, the less they intimidate their media nemeses. What they do is introduce a thick swath of suspicion that something is amiss, something is being covered up. It is covered up through uncalled for abuse.

We at this publication are surprised by the latest incident of political leadership abuse. We are mistaken in thinking that the PPPC Government and its now seasoned cohort of leadership would have grown into maturity after five years on top and virtually unchallenged in one of the best national stories in the world. The thicker skin that was expected is not there. The presence of some level of tolerance for different thinking and different postures, we felt would help this government to break away from where it has trapped itself. It is forever on the defensive, always seeing enemies inside of every nook and cranny across Guyana.

The biggest enemy of this country is Venezuela’s President Maduro. Yet he is treated with the equivalent of kid’s gloves when the president’s and vice president’s treatment of members of the independent press is compared. One of the foreign observer missions during the elections had cause to remark on this shabby standard now the norm in government-media relations. The PPPC Government had five years to refine its relationship with the independent media. Apparently, it dismisses civilizing itself, prefers the ways of barbarians and butchers.

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Editorial, independent media, PPPC Government, press, putdown, slur

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