Dear Editor,
At last Thursday’s launch of the new Guyana Times broadsheet, your newspaper reported that President Bharrat Jagdeo essentially described Guyanese businessman, Mr Yesu Persaud as ‘ignorant’ of the tax laws for simply suggesting that consideration should be given to extending tax concessions given to QAII (owners of the new paper) to other local businesses, and then proceeded to explain what aspects of the government’s agreement with QAII qualified for tax concessions.
From what I read in your news account, the President did explain that the newspaper’s owners would not be getting the benefit of duty-free concessions on their (printing) equipment and consumables; however their textile and antibiotics [ventures] will get a tax holiday.
Now, had Mr Persaud not made his suggestion, what are the chances the public would have known this bit of information the President revealed? In fact, what exactly does the public know about the details of the deal between the government and QAII? I noticed the PNC called for government to share this information, so what’s the status?
This is beginning to look like the government’s $165 million secret deal with Buddy’s hotel, for which the public still knows only what the government wanted it to know. What is similar between the Buddy’s deal and the QAII deal, however, is that when word of the Buddy’s loan got out and Stabroek News broke the story with pertinent questions, the President angrily lashed out at Stabroek News. In the case of the QAII tax concessions, the President has angrily lashed out at Mr Persaud for making a pertinent observation.
It is becoming frighteningly obvious that the President really wants a free hand to do whatever he pleases and if anyone questions him, s/he gets a public slamming. But with all the government’s talk about return of democracy, whatever happened to accountability, transparency and scrutiny in government?
Mr Editor, unless there has been a hitherto unknown frost or rift between the President and Mr Persaud, I can’t see why the President would use the word ‘ignorant’ in the same sentence that referenced Mr Persaud, especially given Mr Persaud’s national and international eputation that long predates the Bharrat Jagdeo presidency.
Apart from his use of the word ‘ignorant,’ the President tried to humiliate Mr Persaud by referencing the fact that Mr Persaud also had a business venture – medical transcription services –that obtained tax concessions, but which failed. Why would the President highlight this failure in his response? Is the President aware of Mr Persaud’s resumé as a business leader that even one or two flopped ventures cannot truly define the man’s venerated standing among his peers at home and abroad?
In closing, I have nothing against Buddy’s or QAII’s business ventures, but when the government gets involved in or associated with private ventures, it has to come clean with the public, or risk being questioned and criticized until it does. Moreover, while there are already three local dailies informing a country of 700,000, I see no financial wisdom in having a fourth.
How much is actually happening in Guyana that three existing tabloids and the PPP’s Mirror are not doing a good enough job reporting on? And to the President: what is it that the new daily would report as truth and facts that the state-owned Guyana Chronicle cannot and does not?
Something is not adding up here!
One has to seriously wonder whether the true rationale for a new daily is to thinly spread the wealth of ads revenue so that newspapers that don’t report what government likes will see their share of state ads drastically cut. The President would have made more sense if he had arranged for the issuance of a new radio licence and end government’s monopoly. But pettiness and vindictiveness are traits that no longer surprise!
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
