One would assume that with the start-up of two important projects – the citizens security programme and the conservancy adaptation programme – that those in charge at the executing agencies would be able to exercise their own judgement on where ads should be placed particularly in light of the fact that donor funds are involved. Sadly, no such initiative is tolerated at all by this government and the two units which answer to the Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Home Affairs are now marching to the brutal boycott tune.
Unfortunately it is not only these. The Office of the Auditor General which is a constitutional agency and not subject to the direction and control of anyone has also subscribed to the government’s boycott. For an office that should fiercely guard its independence and did so admirably under the tenure of Mr Goolsarran this is a great disappointment and dangerous portent for this overarching financial watchdog. Would it be able to withstand government interference in its investigations of malpractices similar to the export of dolphins from the Office of the President? At another level, in its scrutiny of public accounts, the Auditor General’s office should be ensuring that taxpayers get value for money. The decision to place ads only in the Kaieteur News and the Guyana Chronicle fails this test from the outset.
Region Four’s decision to boycott Stabroek News now poses an interesting challenge to the PNCR. No longer is this solely in the remit of the PPP/C. Region Four represents a refreshing alliance between the PPP/C and the PNCR-1G and the latter has the largest number of seats. Surely if the PNCR is so opposed to the ads boycott this would have been brought to the fore and generated heated debates at the level of the council. This doesn’t seem to have been the case but Stabroek News now expects that the PNCR-1G will live up to its public position and take up this matter at the level of the council.
It will also be an interesting study in whether region four or any other region for that matter yields to diktat from central government. A regional administration should make its own decisions on the prudent application of funds and not come under central government’s direction. We wait to see how this plays out particularly in regions where the PPP/C doesn’t have a majority.
Where the police and army are concerned, one would think that they are allowed the latitude to make decisions on where ads should be placed. Certainly, if the army and police are looking for recruits nationwide they would be expected to place ads in all the newspapers and not follow the government’s discriminatory path. Sadly this is not the case and exposes again the subverting of these institutions.
What is presently transpiring may also be a sign that a number of agencies like the police and army are trying their utmost to please the government. So without express edicts or directives they are following suit. That is a sad commentary on the state the country is in at the moment. When state-owned entities like the Guyana Power and Light and the Guyana Sugar Corporation which should be answerable to their boards also behave in this manner, as they did from January last year, it exposes the iron-fisted grip that is being applied to target independent voices like this newspaper. Neither GuySuCo nor GPL has relented even though a new financial year has begun. On what basis has the ads been withdrawn and continue to be withheld? Neither entity can explain up to now.
The brutal campaign mounted by the government against Stabroek News raises two other questions which have much purchase today. First, there is no transparency in decision-making and when confronted those in authority contrive and dissemble. The opaqueness raises troubling questions about how decisions are arrived at by this administration and the motives behind these decisions. Perhaps, as Ann Widdecombe put it when she dismantled Michael Howard’s first campaign to be Tory leader, there is `something of the night’ in these decisions. The government should take note of former US President Jimmy Carter’s call last week for freedom of information to be made a global right. What will it finally do when the AFC’s freedom of information bill comes up in parliament? Second, the ads fiasco raises valid questions about the complete inflexibility and obduracy of the government even in light of widespread public dissent and reasoned arguments. The ads boycott of Stabroek News has been adamantly condemned by broad sections of the Guyanese society and by media groups both here and abroad. The government has not budged from its entrenched position even though several proposals have been made by Stabroek News and others for equitable and transparent distribution of these taxpayers’ funded ads. The Jagdeo administration remains blindly unyielding to any reasonable compromise on this and other areas. It is a flaw that strikes at the heart of good and fair governance and raises doubts about the government’s sincerity about including civil society and other stakeholders in decision making.
And 16 months on, the ruling PPP/C is still to issue a formal statement on the ads cut-off. Where does it stand collectively on the ads withdrawal as distinct from the known positions of Mrs Jagan and several others? History shall also judge it in this gross assault on press freedom.
