Speaker of the National Assembly Raphael Trotman yesterday accused the state-owned Guyana Chronicle of an attack on his office, stemming from a report he described as a blatant untruth.
In a statement, Trotman denied the contents of the June 17, 2012 Chronicle report, ‘Consequent Upon Rebuke of Opposition MPs… Speaker Violates Impartiality of Chair’ and demanded a retraction from the newspaper.
According to him, the story “blatantly, and perhaps maliciously” stated that he had succumbed to verbal onslaughts of opposition MPs and backpedalled on his ruling on a request by APNU MP Carl Greenidge to disallow the Financial Paper at the last sitting of the National Assembly.
“References were made of threats to the Speaker, and even to his family background. It was (a) vile attack on the Constitutional Office of Speaker of the National Assembly; clumsily disguised to implicate Opposition Members of Parliament as the real culprits,” Trotman said.
“Without ever checking with the Speaker as to what transpired on the evening of Thursday, June 21, 2012, the story stated that the Speaker was ‘vilified for his ruling by his colleagues who descended to the most despicable behaviour and harangued in the basest terms, for hours afterwards.’ This, in the opinion of the Guyana Chronicle, caused him to reverse a previous ruling,” he added.
However, Trotman emphasised that at no time was he “threatened, or harangued” by any MP about his ruling.
He said the “blatant untruth being peddled” is unworthy of a media house that wishes to be taken seriously, while noting that journalistic ethics require the editors to verify the truth of statements made in stories submitted by their reporters. “In this case, a story alleging that the Speaker of the National Assembly was threatened by Members of Parliament, is so grave and threatening to the national security, order and good governance of the State of Guyana, that at the very least, the Speaker should have been asked to verify it,” he said.
Trotman explained that when the ruling was being read, he clearly indicated that there were some corrections to be made and later the corrected version was circulated. He added that his ruling was an extrapolation of an earlier ruling given in March, 2012 on the right of the National Assembly to examine requests for expenditure by the government.
In that earlier ruling, he said he had indicated that the Minister of Finance has the right to resubmit the four Financial Heads that were disallowed by the National Assembly. The two rulings, he noted, are meant to be read together.
“This report has to be condemned as shameless and cowardly journalism, and the Guyana Chronicle is called upon to retract it, and to lift the standards of its journalism if it wants to be taken seriously in the future.
It is obvious that there is talent within the ranks of the Chronicle, but its journalistic excellence is being overshadowed and retarded by the spectre of nasty and divisive politics,” Trotman added.
