Dear Editor,
I write regarding the article published in the Stabroek News captioned “DPI debt to Stabroek News at $70.7m” (December 7, 2025). The protracted withholding of $70.7 million in payments is not a bureaucratic delay but a deliberate strategy by the Irfaan Ali administration to financially suffocate the independent press. This tactic of economic coercion aims to either force compliance or engineer the closure of a critical journalistic institution. But the PPP will fail on this one.
This pattern is entrenched in the DNA of the PPP leadership. Recall that even former president Janet Jagan, in a 2007 column, publicly urged the then Jagdeo-led PPP government to “end the withdrawal of government advertising from Stabroek News.” She was swiftly rebuked personally by none other than Mr Jagdeo himself and reminded that her view was not government policy. In Mr Jagdeo’s own words he said, “Mrs Jagan is entitled to her opinion as a private citizen”. Jagdeo told the now defunct Government Information Agency (GINA) that Mrs Jagan’s opinion was not government policy, especially when the matter relates to the use of taxpayers’ funds.
This historical precedent confirms that targeting the press is a conscious PPP strategy; not an oversight.
Such actions violate the government’s constitutional duty under Article 146, which guarantees freedom of expression and the press. The consistent ignoring of formal communications by the DPI and Minister Kwame McCoy reveals a policy of neglect designed to silence scrutiny. The partial payment, made only after international exposure, proves a government sensitive to reputation but indifferent to its foundational obligations. The PPP operates like the schoolyard bully who picks on those they think they can beat. But the world is watching them on this one and this matter will end up in the annual US State Department report. I wonder how President Ali will deal with that? Will he remonstrate with the US government as he did with the EU system?
The principle is universal in all democracies, especially in the United States. As US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black affirmed in the famous Pentagon Papers case in front of the Supreme Court, New York Times Co v United States (1971), “The press was to serve the governed, not the governors… Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”
Here in Guyana, the state is doing the opposite. It is starving the press to prevent it from serving the people and exposing the deception in government. And there are many acts of deception and smoke and mirrors in this Irfaan Ali-led PPP government.
Settling this debt in full and ending this punitive financial blockade is the absolute minimum required to cease this suppression campaign. The people are watching, and history shows that governments which fear accountability do not endure.
I encourage President Irfaan Ali to do the right thing and pay the debt owed to Stabroek News. I also call on the US Ambassador to ensure this episode of trying to oppress the independent press in Guyana, on the part of the Irfaan Ali government is well noted in the periodic communications to her headquarters in Washington DC.