Dear Editor,
There are three months left in the year 2010. The last Guyana Prize for Literature was the Guyana Prize of 2006. I could repeat my observations and criticisms of almost half a year ago but what really would be the point? Between the government and organising committee’s inscrutability in this matter and the media’s – including this paper, and its purported commitment to culture and the arts – unwillingness or perhaps incapacity to interrogate exactly what has happened, a grand and subtle coup against free expression seems to have taken place in Guyana without so much of a murmur from anyone. What is astonishing to me is that no nexus, no correlative link, has been established between the removal of the Prize and the effective cancellation of government ads in the [free] press.
Yours faithfully,
Ruel Johnson