Dear Editor,
I am kind of puzzled by the seemingly one-sided censoring of opinions that seems to have become an editorial policy of the Stabroek News. It would seem that one can make the most outlandish claims that are critical of the opposition and supportive of the ruling regime, and they would be published in the paper. However, when this is reciprocated it is not tolerable or acceptable. While I can understand the need to protect against libel suits and to maintain a standard of discourse that is palatable, it is the unevenness in the wielding of the editorial scythe that puzzles me. Maybe it is simply because the abbreviation PPP has more filial and positive connections with the controlling agency of the editorial establishment than the abbreviation PNC. And really, maybe, I ought to be a little bit more of a realist in accepting the fact of a historical political accord that has laid the foundation for how news and issues are reported in Guyana, even by a press that styles itself as independent.
The scales of justice will always be weighed against any group in any society whose voices are being politically marginalized. And nowhere else in the Commonwealth Caribbean, are the voices of the descendants of Africans more marginalized than in current day Guyana. If the situation that exists in Guyana today, in terms of ownership and control of the most accessible sources of media information, was occurring anywhere else in the Caribbean, and the marginalized were not black, there would be an uproar. But it is allowed to percolate in Guyana in synchrony with absurd and patently insipid enunciations that there is fairness and balance, and freedom of the press. When the press is overwhelmingly owned and controlled by one group of people and the efforts of another to obtain a semblance of parity is arrogantly being trampled upon by the political regime in power, any notion of a free press is an illusory perception that is unattainable under the current political construction.
The descendants of Africans who suffered and died under the yolk of enslavement for centuries in Guyana, deserve equal allotment of media licences in order to present and proliferate their views in accordance with their perspectives and perceptions. This should not be a privilege that is dependent on the antipathetic whims and prejudices of individuals who bring such baggage to their official functions. This should be a distribution based on proportion and fairness, and a token of recognition that Guyana is not a homogeneous human nesting. The ancestors of Guyanese of African descent, like the ancestors of all other groups that make up the ethnic mosaic of Guyana’s population, paid a hefty cost for them to be treated with the same considerations as are bestowed upon others, regardless of which group happens to be occupying the towers of government at the time. The fact that African Guyanese contribute overwhelmingly to the maintenance cost of the state-owned media through compulsory tax deductions, and have become virtual Cinderellas in so far as their access to it and their relationship with the political parent that oversees it is concerned, represents an infamy of prodigious proportions.
Biases that are pervasively negative with respect to African Guyanese have always been, and seem to have become more imbedded within the political and commercial community that speaks for civil society over the past 17 years. So much so that the disproportionate distribution of licences to own and operate print media do not even cause a blip on their radar of fairness and balance.
The leadership within the African Guyanese community, besides labouring under what was described as a “psychology of wrongness,” is also being subjected to a rank and scurrilous form of blackmail. That is to say, they are being presented with a scenario that threatens their freedom if they dare to speak truth to the power of ethnic and political hubris. African Guyanese can at least begin to experientially empathize with the concerns and experience of their brethren and sistren in other theatres, while the critics engaged in the attempt to silence them at all costs, lace up the symbiotic moccasins.
A nation or government does not need to have a policy that says ‘We do not like this group,’ or ‘do not allow any opportunity to members of that group,’ for those attitudes to become pervasive in the institutions of officialdom. People come to the job with the baggage of their personal and individual prejudices and biases, and make decisions and enact policies under that influence. The fact that there is a chasm of inconsistency between the attitude of the PPP government and its members with regard to the bauxite and sugar strike is not a coincidence of immaterial circumstances. It is because the sugar workers are mostly Indians who vote for the PPP and the bauxite workers are mainly Africans who do not. It does not require a PhD in Industrial Relations or Political Science to make this discernment. Neither are the withdrawal of subventions from the Critchlow Labour College attended mostly by African Guyanese, the rationalization of torture and extra-judicial killings when the victims are African Guyanese, and the fact that the state has never offered financial incentives for information leading to solving the murders of victims like Ronald Waddell and the sister of ‘Fineman,’ coincidences of unrelated circumstances. The one constant is the race or ethnicity of the deceased victims, and those who are connected with those organizations and institutions. So while the PPP might not have a policy of marginalizing of blacks on its books, the evidence that this exists is overwhelmingly obvious.
African Guyanese must argue for the right and freedom to own and operate media that allow them to present an unabridged version of their experiences, historical and current. The most accessible form of media in Guyana today happens to be print and audio, both of which are being forbidden to black ownership. No group will be satisfied with the assumption of others that they can do a better job of telling their stories than members of their group can. That is a ludicrous and insulting assumption. The government and its screaming sycophancy are consistently belabouring the fact of the imbalance in the disciplined services and the public service, but clearly are unperturbed by similar imbalances in other areas where the minority is African Guyanese. This represents an example of the prism of prejudice through which they look down upon all things, and the accompanying arrogance with which they display such prejudices. Speaking out against injustices should not be ok for one side of any political equation and not so for the other.
Yours faithfully,
Robin Williams
Editor’s note
1. Stabroek News has no editorial policy involving the “one-sided censoring of opinions.” We routinely publish the views of readers both supportive and critical of the government within the guidelines we have frequently laid out.
2. The arrangements for acquiring a newspaper licence are entirely unrelated to those currently in operation in respect of radio and TV licences. We refer Mr Williams to the Publication and Newspapers Act (Cap: 21:01).
