Dear Editor,
Most people expect that now that the Mirror and Mrs Jagan have spoken, the government will correct its excess regarding newspaper advertising, revise its new-found advertising cost benefit theory and come to order. Whatever the government does now, it has been a defining issue.
It is an issue that not only defines how government decisions are taken, and where the most persuasive location is, but also the relationship between party and state.
It will instruct the population about the application of democratic centralism in the Guyana context where the non-governmental press remains a kind of power and where other divisions may act to deprive the paramount party of its wish for absolute authority.
It is hoped that those officials who have so far justified the ban will now see that the comments of all who protested the ban, now joined effectively by a member of their own ‘A’ team, have been effectively supporting one of the few rights not yet totally eroded.
Time will tell. For those too young or too busy to remember, in 1973 the then head of Guyana’s government, PM Mr LFS Burnham, said in Barbados when pressed about the freedom of the press, “In Guyana we don’t tell people what to print. We tell them what not to print.”
We leave aside other possible effects of the advertisement measure hoping that egos will give way to commonsense and justice.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
David Hinds
Andaiye