Dear Editor,
I am awed and inspired by Prime Minis-ter Phillips, Guyana’s own legendary Mark Antony. This sonnet is dedicated to him; given time, a full-fledged play could be his to love and to cherish. A tragicomic operatic production that does justice to the new Guyana man. One of mature stature, a thoroughly fine fellow to have in a foxhole when shrapnel bombard, God disappears. No Guyanese dare share these accolades with the 60 staff members of Stabroek News. Theirs is the bread line waiting. Still, I pen this encomium to the Hon PM for teaching Guyana a new translation of the English Language. Recall that lonely word he uttered in Guyana’s National Assembly: responsibility. People who take their responsibility seriously pay their bills. SN can give an affidavit, and how PM Phillip’s definition, translation, concoction (whatevah) of responsibility stands in their estimation. The facts follow; be forewarned: they frighten.
Guyana’s Mark Antony put his head on a block before friends and favoured Guyanese, countryfolk all, to assert and assure that the PPP Gov’t is a ‘guvment dat duz honah itz’ debt. So, how Mr. Prime Minister, the death of Stabroek News results? I turned into stone, when SN received belatedly a measly $7.4 million out of the total $93.8 million owed. Mr. Prime Minister: 7.89 cents on each dollar doesn’t approach my interpretations of what responsibility means. Or resembles responsible honouring of a long accumulating debt. Prime Minister Phillips should take it from a nobody: no job, no prestigious title, no pay packet, is worth dismembering oneself like this publicly. Seven cents plus on the dollar after almost a year of arrears is not owning up to responsibility, as the PM knows. It’s an obscenity, which I think PM Phillips also knows.
To all Guyanese, I say this: can anyone see the Government of Guyana getting away with paying Exxon or LindsayCa a lousy seven cents on the dollar for millions due? Explains why Exxon collects the billions due to it right off the top (and any spare ones hanging around without an owner). Even its own so-called highly trusted partner doesn’t trust the PPP Govt. Cash up front; credit makes for bad friends. And the latter is bad for business, as SN has experienced. After this running battle over ad allocations, ad payments, and ad backstabbing, a fitting finale was needed to maintain the standard for responsibility set by the PPP Govt, with PM Phillips as senior drummer.
From nowhere, and during Ramadan and Lent, SN had its own Pearl Harbour strafing and battering. No more ads with immediate effect came out of the bomb ports of the DPI. There are neither holy days nor righteous seasons left in this country. But, of course, it could be claimed that the PPP Gov’t lived up to the responsibility that Guyana’s Mark Antony claimed. The PM did dance that masquerade when called to answer a question in parliament. Stabroek News was given more than the normal two weeks’ notice, since March 15, its last publication day, is now 14 days away. What an unprecedented and incomparable way of manifesting what true responsibility is all about. SN as a hardcopy paper is on its deathbed, and the PPP Govt was kind enough to put it out of its misery early. Diminishing returns that’s called. Cut losses early stands as another.
As the last rites are read for SN, there’s still this to be said. The DPI sent its ad termination letter and immediately a connection came. I recalled one Mr. Gopinath “Bobby” Gossai (a real doctor now I think), who worked his special brand of mathematics that jiggered US$214 million in audit findings, so it miniaturized to US$3 million. Dr. Bob had powerful men behind him who knew what to do with that kind of responsibility, but got a willing and able foot soldier to deliver the goods, take the rap. So, too, the DPI that sent out its ad death announcement, and instead of MP Duncan, I now ask the question. Who has responsibility, Mr. PM? Who took that step, General PM, that reeks of abandonment of responsibility, and cloaking it in vulgarity? Et tu, Prime Minister, what about duty? Whither noble leadership? What about parliamentary word offered so unambiguously? When those are distanced from, then mortally wounded is responsibility, and its long fall into indecency and disrepute.