Dear Editor,
It is time to set the record straight regarding my retreat from Guyana. When I first sold VCT I was embroiled in several court cases and negotiations regarding such matters as property taxes and outstanding income taxes which constrained me from speaking for fear of further victimization.
At the time I told the public that I was retiring and that I was disposing of my assets since I wanted to lead a less stressful life. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I loved being a broadcaster in Guyana and I liked (not loved) being in Parliament; it’s boring! Interesting, but boring and pointless. The Guyanese people would be well advised to look at the workings of their Parliament which I have said over and over is simply a charade, where the PPP do what they want to do and where the opposition are incapable of making any changes without the full and militant support of their constituents, and if that means public displays of their dissatisfaction then so be it. At no time did I suggest burning anything or hurting anyone, but Dr Martin Luther King achieved much in the US with passive resistance and marching.
The demise of my company, Vieira Communications Limited, started in 2006 when the lottery company moved the nightly draw from VCT to NCN. In discussions with me at my home Mr Simon Wall told me then that the government had made them (Canadian Bank Note) a very attractive offer which he could not refuse. What he did not know was that I was recording him, I knew exactly where I was going to put him to sit and set up the recording equipment accordingly. I maintain that the lottery company was coerced to move the draw from VCT to NCN, although he later publicly denied that this was so. There could only have been one reason for moving the draw, and that was to victimize me.
For years I have been telling the Guyanese public that I am being discriminated against since people were being coerced by the government not to advertise on my channel, notwithstanding that it was the most viewed channel in Guyana. Our information was that members of the regime would look at the advertisers in our nightly programming, call them the next day with threats of close examination of their imports at customs and at the revenue authority. I can’t say who was calling these people; whether they could have actually executed these threats is irrelevant, the threats were enough to frighten the public away.
The public will appreciate the hypocrisy of this since during the elections VCT got the most PPP advertising of the private channels. Incidentally we never knew if PPP advertising was being paid for on the state owned media.
My application for and the subsequent refusal of a licence to operate a radio station was based on competition and vision, and not greed, since it was our information that the government was offering package deals to the public for radio and TV advertising – ie, if you play so many ads on NCN TV you would get so many ads on NCN Radio. So even though VCT28 was more popular than NCN TV, under these pressures the advertisers either did not advertise, or they gave their advertising to NCN.
A similar ploy was used to pressure the Stabroek News, but your courageous stand and the international and national support you were able to mobilize forced them to stop the withdrawal of government advertisements from your daily.
Operating a TV and radio station would have made VCT very economical, since we would not have had to buy a transmission site and tower as they were already there; we would not have had to buy stand-by generators because they were already there; we would not have had to build an office, including studios for production, or hire administration staff, as they were already there in Quamina Street; and most importantly, we would not have had to build a newsroom since it was already there. We could have spent more on the production of the news, therefore, and made it better.
So operating the two entities together would have, we estimate, doubled VCT’s income but raised the expenditure only around 15-20%. If I had gotten that radio licence I would still own VCT 28 and still be living at my beloved home on the West Bank, Demerara.
The end to my ownership of VCT 28 came in 2007 when Trinity Broadcasting Network was taken off the air. At some future date I will disclose the shenanigans that went on at the NFMU to replace TBN with Hits and Jams TV, but the result was that with the loss of the lotto and then the TBN income, VCT began the steep decline to bankruptcy.
The economy is in shambles so the traditional advertising was no longer there, and whatever little advertising existed was being sabotaged by NCN either with or without the knowledge of the government. Mr Winston Murray and I went to see Dr Luncheon who was holding the portfolio for broadcasting in 2007, and frankly in the three times we saw him within one week, we were convinced that he was very sympathetic about the TBN removal from the air but he apparently could do nothing since someone else wanted TBN off the Air and Hits and Jams on the air.
Every time the public looks at what Hits and Jams is contributing to the Guyanese society they must remember that to put them there, the country lost both VCT in its original form and TBN to do it. The price Guyana paid for the loss of VCT 28 under my control was due in large part to the complacency of the Guyanese people today.
There is one inaccuracy in your report about my resignation from Parliament. I have not migrated; I am for the time being in the US (although it could very well be the Bahamas), but I do not have a green card so I am essentially here as a visitor and I have been back to Guyana three times since June. I am a Guyanese and a Vieira, and that makes me a substantial shareholder in real estate at Houston and I do still own a house at Versailles where my son Anthony lives, and I have acquired a house lot at Houston from my family where at some time I hope to build a house.
I close with these famous words of Sir Winston Churchill; they pertain not only to the government but to everyone who lives in Guyana, with a few notable exceptions, but those exceptions are like Don Quixote, since without the full support of the public they are labelled as madmen charging windmills which appear to be giants. This is what Churchill said: “So they go on, in a strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved only to be irresolute, solid when they should be fluid, all powerful to be impotent.”
Yours faithfully,
Anthony Vieira
