Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon on Thursday refuted Ralph Ramkarran’s claim that the PPP had opposed the cut-off of state advertisements to Stabroek News in 2006, saying that while there was disagreement among executive members, they ultimately backed the decision.
Ramkarran had stated earlier this week that the ruling party had opposed the removal of advertisements, but was ignored by the government of former president Bharrat Jagdeo. This was the first time an executive member of the party had publicly disclosed the PPP’s position on the matter.
“I don’t believe the statement Mr Ramkarran allegedly made is accurate,” Luncheon said. “It certainly did not reflect my recall [and] I would not be speaking out of turn to establish that indeed it was not unanimously reviewed and accepted by each and every member of the party’s executive,” Luncheon told Stabroek News yesterday when asked about the issue.
He referred to the term democratic centralism, which he says means, “we discuss, we disagree and as soon as a decision is made we are beholden. So I would want you to “assess” that the tenets of democratic centralism was applied in that matter and hence the decision was supported by the People’s Progressive Party executive.”
Luncheon is an executive member of the party.
Ramkarran’s account was given in response to an editorial which appeared in Monday’s edition of the Stabroek News. The editorial had stated that the Jagdeo administration’s axing of ads to Stabroek News in 2006, “was a trifling matter for all in the PPP and its government except for the late, former president, Mrs Janet Jagan who called clearly for an end to the advertising boycott to no avail.”
Ramkarran said in a letter to the editor: “The PPP did not consider the withdrawal of the advertisements to be a trifling matter.
It was extensively discussed both at the Executive Committee and later, the Central Committee of the PPP which called on the government to restore the advertisements to the Stabroek News. The government ignored the decision and since the PPP did not practice `party paramountcy’ there was no way of enforcing it. It is not known by me whether those members of the Central Committee of the PPP who were senior members of the Cabinet advocated in that forum the decision of the PPP leadership to which there was no dissentient voice, or whether they remained silent.”
It is widely believed that Jagdeo himself instructed the ads cut-off because of this newspaper’s criticisms of his government and because he wanted to help pave the way for the advent of the government-friendly Guyana Times. The Jagdeo administration had argued that the decision was a purely business one by the Government Information Agency (GINA) because it wanted more value for its advertising dollar. Ads were then placed solely with the Guyana Chronicle and the Kaieteur News. In 2008, state ads were restored to Stabroek News without explanation, but it later became clear that this had been done to enable ads to be placed in the Guyana Times. One year after its launching the Guyana Times began to receive state ads and its volume began to rival that of the other private newspapers.
State ads were eventually pulled from all private media in the second half of 2010 after the government said it would use an e-procurement site and the state newspaper, the Guyana Chronicle.
