Westmaas is wrong about press freedom

I FIND the level of comicality in political discourse in Guyana higher than in most countries. This laughable input in the denunciation of the government by its critics is so huge that you can hurt yourself through uncontrollable burst of laughter. Read all the anti-government newspapers, anti-government civil society groups and opposition parties and you think that Guyana is one big circus.

These people accuse the government of the very perversities, immoralities, ugly reactions and unpleasantness that they themselves embody. And when they write about lack of integrity, accountability, principles etc. in the government, you have to be careful you don’t laugh out too loudly and burn your leg from your hot coffee. That happened to me hundreds of times and my leg is now half-functioning.

So read what Nigel Westmaas wrote about me: “My WPA colleague, Wazir Mohamed sent a letter responding to Kissoon’s claim in the Chronicle about the late Rupert Roopnaraine. Mohamed’s letter was never published.^[1] What does Kissoon think about that in relation to press freedom?”

Does Westmaas really think that Stabroek News (SN), Kaieteur News (KN) and the Chronicle are different from each other? If he does, he is deceiving himself. The expectation is that the Chronicle is state-owned so it is reluctant to carry criticism of the government. The expectation is that the SN and KN are privately owned so they would carry your letters.

Westmaas has been living out of Guyana since Atlantis the lost continent disappeared so he does not meet the people I meet and he does not read the newspapers as often as I do because I live in Guyana and he doesn’t. In his March 14 letter of condemnation of me, Westmaas made reference to a business group that Gerald Perreira made mention of.^[2]

When you read Westmaas quoting Perreira you would think Westmaas is referring to something Pereira wrote in SN. No! Perreira said his words on a podcast with David Hinds.^[3] Perreira told me over a ten-year-old period, the SN has refused to carry his letters denouncing Western imperialism.

The day before SN closed its doors, it insulted Perreira and the nation by carrying a letter by Perreia. Imagine that! One letter in ten years and a day before the paper called it George. And the letter was in condemnation of the government.

Ravi Dev wrote two letters to SN in the space of two weeks analysing the politics Rupert Roopnaraine. They were never carried. I met Joel Bhagwandin in Massy’s Supermarket last week and the topic was the closure of SN. He said many of his letters were never carried by SN while GHK Lall wrote a daily letter in SN and Chris Ram had at least one a week.

The Usual Suspects (TUS) to which Westmaas belongs usually publish a weekly letter among themselves in the SN. So, these people can have space in SN and KN but it becomes a problem when I have space in the Chronicle. I am featured daily in the Chronicle with one piece but Chris Ram is featured sometimes twice a day in SN. I never wrote two pieces in one day in the Chronicle.

How does Westmaas interpret press freedom in Guyana? Let Westmaas point to the newspaper in the world where its editor told a presidential adviser that his letters cannot be carried because he attacks civil society groups. And the adviser is a former professor at one of the best rated universities in the United States.

When the adviser made that embargo public, SN did not respond until two years after and it was a reaction to the Attorney-General’s citing the embargo. Here is the explanation of SN for banning the man – a letter writer cannot make ad-hominem attacks on civil society.

SN did not have the journalistic decency to cite at least one example of ad hominem attack so its readers could have determined what constituted an ad hominem condemnation. It couldn’t do so because it knows it would have embarrassed itself. The man, Dr. Randy Persaud, is a high-level professor with books to his name in International Relations^[4], so here is what happened.

Friends of the owners of SN that belong to TUS and the Mulatto/Creole class requested that the man’s submissions be denied publication. The man provides high-quality intellectual rebuttals to the nonsense the TUS writes on the fossil fuel industry in the Western world.

The man was embarrassing the anti-oil critics. In one letter, he showed how vehicle emission in one industrialised, Western country, destroys the environment when compared to the entire Global South.

The Stabroek News had its day where, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, everybody on the French Riviera sought his company. Then he faded and lost his way. I suggest Westmaas read Fitzgerald’s magnum opus – Tender is the Night.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.

References

1. My final response to Mr Kissoon’s Chronicle columns ↩
2. Dr. Randolph Persaud responds to Nigel Westmaas - Guyana Chronicle — guyanachronicle.com ↩
3. Politics 101: David Hinds with Guest Gerald Perreira: Guyana and the world – Organization for the Victory of the People Guyana — www.ovpguyana.org ↩
4. Dr Persaud has ignored inconvenient truths - Stabroek News — www.stabroeknews.com ↩