Dear Editor,
Please find below, a copy of a letter which I sent to the Editor of the Guyana Chronicle on Wednesday last for publication. It does not seem that it would be carried by that newspaper, and I am respectfully asking that you do so. The letter follows:
“I would like to compliment Mr Ramkarran on his piece on the PPP’s fight for freedom of expression in yesterday’s issue of your newspaper. It is certainly in the tradition of his party’s concern with ‘educating the masses’. As the country’s oldest political party, it has the advantage of institutional memory. This superiority which it enjoys does place a significant responsibility on its scribes.
” For example, in an article published in the Mirror’s issue of November 17-18, Mr Odeen Ishmael chronicled what he termed ‘the PYO’s struggle for the vote at 18’.
“After reading it, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Mirror newspaper, pointing out that some member of its editorial board should have advised the writer that the PPP, although it fought ‘relentlessly’ for the measure, found it necessary to vote against the relevant motion, when it was brought before Parliament, and the reason why the party found it necessary to do so.
” My letter has not been published to date.
“Now, Mr Ramkarran writes at length about Dr Jagan’s love of freedom of speech. And my mind flashes back to a gentleman by the name of Percy Armstrong, former editor of the Daily Argosy.
“I distinctly remember Dr Jagan instructing a member of the GIS staff to remove this gentleman from the room on more than one occasion because he enquired from Dr Jagan if he was a communist. And this could be distinctly heard over the air waves.
“This was during the period 1957-64, and the PPP government had no control over the importation of newsprint nor newspaper advertisements as they do today. So I am left to wonder what would have happened if they had.
“But maybe the party can explain this, and they should so that younger people can better understand the bases of many of our current happenings.”
Yours faithfully,
Michael Parris
