Dear Editor,
I opened your newspaper of 14th February 2008 and was somewhat taken aback to see a letter on page 7 penned by young Kamal Ramkarran entitled “Disappointed that a serious newspaper would dabble in gossip”.
Perhaps Mr Kamal Ramkarran may be forgiven for that ill-advised letter after all he is young, and typical of our youth, prone to impulsiveness.
Kellawan Lall, as Minister of Local Government is a public figure and an elected official.
Guyanese society today has basically lost the high moral standards that were inculcated in me among many others both at home and school and which everyone regarded as normal and expected. In other words, you were taught and knew how to behave. It is unfortunate that the standards of conduct, even from the highest levels in this country have fallen to such low levels, that some, if not most, now regard behaviour that I and a few others may call reprehensible, as quite normal or “no big thing” and which, as young Kamal would have us do, should be swept under a rug called privacy.
Mr Kellawan Lall’s very public and unsavoury conduct as a gunslinger and a snackette pugilist is not only unbecoming of someone holding the position of Minister of Government. It is both distasteful and a bad example to a society already wallowing in a morass of bad behavior.
My good friend Leon Rockliffe eloquently articulated these views in two earlier letters to you after the first incident and I can do no better than to concur with him.
For young Kamal to argue that the public exhibition of ducking from blows by a Minister of Government is a matter of privacy, which ought to be regarded as gossip unworthy of reporting in a newspaper, entirely missed the point.
It is Mr Lall’s status in society, the times and places at which these incidents occurred, the nature of the incidents and the inaction of his functional superiors which make these matters of public interest worthy of reporting in any newspaper. It is Mr Lall’s conduct which titillates; not the reporting of such conduct. The citizenry has the right to know about the public behaviour/misbehaviour by the persons who are there to serve them. How else would the citizenry know whether to vote for them next time around?
If young Kamal’s argument were to hold any validity at all then all the highly respected new organisations both print and electronic in the United States which reported on Bill Clinton’s sexual affairs with Lewinsky would have been invading his privacy and they would have been engaging in gossip. But not even Clinton raised such an objection. In fact he tearfully asked his country’s forgiveness.
By the same token the report by the very news organizations of a US law maker engaging in homosexual acts in an airport toilet would be a violation of his privacy and pure gossip. In this case the lawmaker resigned.
Young Kamal’s reasoning is clouded by his own immature political biases and flies in the face of and defies all good and accepted journalistic protocols and practices.
We must also bear in mind that Mr Lall’s initial reaction to the second incident was to deny that it ever happened. The digital recording of the incident soon stimulated his memory. So what we have there is a public official not being candid with his employers, the people of Guyana. I remember a similar reaction of denial by President Jagdeo on the leaking of PPP’s top secrets to the Press and U.S. Embassy. I have already chastised Mr Moses Nagamootoo for only being present in the room with his two big ears, instead of his video camera.
But why should young Kamal single out the Stabroek News report which was mundanely factual. After all it was Capitol News which showed us the digital clip twice and those pictures spoke eloquently louder than the words of the Stabroek News report.
And so the ad-ban against the Stabroek News shall continue.
Yours faithfully,
Khemraj Ramjattan
