Parliamentary media access

Feb 04, 2026 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – Citizens who thought that Speaker of the National Assembly, Manzoor Nadir, had turned to the corner, are sure to be disappointed. When the sense of many was that Speaker Nadir has already reached so low that he couldn’t fall lower, there’s a surprise. For the Speaker is in a seeming race with himself to the bottom, having plunged headlong over a precipice.

We at this publication thought that he had learned some valuable lessons on the Leader of the Opposition selection delay, which resulted from his inexplicable sloth. It took the public putdown of the diplomatic corps to get him to initiate the procedures to address the Leader of the Opposition impasse. Now there is limiting of the media from the parliamentary debate on the 2026 budget. Now Speaker Nadir is digging in his heels again, and the question is what will it take to get him to reverse his decision. His announcement to severely shorten media presence inside parliament before the budget debate even began.

The Speaker spoke of space and security challenges. It was pointed out that the setting of the parliamentary budget debate, the Arthur Chung Convention Center, has more than ample room to accommodate more than the ceiling of five journalists that he imposed. The Guyana Press Association is expectedly up in arms, and noted that as many as 17 journalists were accommodated in past years, so it is baffling that only five are now allowed when there is more room available.

Speaker Nadir, in turn, spoke of configurations and the need for strict security measures to be implemented. He himself admitted that there was more room, but those were mostly taken up by government and parliamentary officials. It is obvious that the Speaker is trying hold an indefensible position, as this paper noted that there were several vacant seats inside parliament, while media professionals were locked out, in keeping with Speaker Nadir’s latest diktat. With each new action that takes him to a new low, Guayna’s chief parliamentary manager has become a law unto himself.

What he is saying makes no sense, shouldn’t fool any independent observer. The limitation that he is applying in 2026 is from the COVID-19 era of several years ago, when fear, panic, and numerous unknowns were the order of the day.

To our knowledge, nobody is sick, still limping from the effects of that virus. To shore up his unacceptable decision and shaky defense of it, the Speaker found refuge in what he believes is an impregnable fortress: security issues, and more of them. To Speaker Nadir we say: what is this newly discovered fear all about? The anxiety doesn’t add up, when the government has i) layers of overt and covert security agencies at its fingertips, ii) media professionals are a known quantity, having been involved in parliamentary coverage for some time, iii) they have had prior screening and clearance to get media accreditation, and iv) the government enjoys a degree of control and awareness that facilitates its arrogance and dismissal of Guyanese as threats of any kind.

In another piece of shabby reasoning for his media limitation decision, he told the frustrated media representatives that they weren’t losing anything of substance, since the Department of Public Information (DPI) live feed is available to them. The man in charge of Guyana’s parliament is either pretending at ignorance, or is simply so far gone, that he doesn’t have a clue about local political realities. The DPI is mocked as a tool and stooge of the PPPC Government, nothing but a yellow official propaganda rag. The DPI has no credibility, its feeds are known from past experience to be unreliable. So, the kind of true and correct reporting that independent media pros would like to deliver to the public could be held to ransom, a victim of DPI (PPPC Government) calculations. Which reporter who cares about his or her reputation is going to depend on an erratic DPI feed, a probably doctored one?

Time will record how long Speaker Nadir maintains his masquerades, which drag him, and Guyana’s parliament, into the dust. He needs to walk back this latest revulsion, so as to salvage claims about parliamentary democracy operating in Guyana.

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Editorial, Manzoor Nadir, media access, parliamentary

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