Longstanding columnist with the Guyana Chronicle and veteran regional journalist Rickey Singh has parted company with the state paper after his most recent submission which was critical of the Granger administration and PM Moses Nagamootoo was not published on Sunday.
After the non-appearance of the column, the Barbados-based Singh had written to then Chronicle Editor-in-Chief Mark Ramotar inquiring about the column. He got no response. On Wednesday, Singh wrote to both Ramotar and Chronicle General Manager Michael Gordon advising of the termination of his relationship with the paper and noting that there had been no response to his queries about the column.
That letter, seen by Stabroek News, notified of the immediate ceasing of the relationship and said that the Chronicle “seems to have fallen victim to a most negative policy of interferences by the new APNU/AFC coalition administration” and he cited Nagamootoo as the person behind this.
“As a journalist of the Caribbean region for a pretty long period of years, I am aware of charges of partisan political interferences by governments in various states of our Caribbean Community, Guyana being among them—previously and currently. But the haste to do so by the current Prime Minister of Guyana and the raw, arrogant tactics being pursued by him to ensure crippling (of) the Chronicle’s independence, is most disgusting and shocking”, Singh, who had been columnist with the paper from just after the PPP/C accession to office in 1992, said.
Singh in his letter to Ramotar and Gordon noted that the unpublished column had a special focus “on the misuse of powers by the `down-sized’ Prime Minister Nagamootoo who seems anxious to ensure compliance with ministerial edicts”.
Nagamootoo was recently criticised for approaching a Guyana Chronicle journalist in Parliament and complaining about a headline on a story in the newspaper about the 2015 budget estimates.
Singh, who had been a journalist at the Chronicle during the Burnham era but left for Barbados over press freedom issues, added, “There is much more to be said for general public information. But for now, I wish it to make it abundantly clear that I can no longer function as an independent professional journalist of the Guyana Chronicle with a current administration seemingly genuflecting to crude interferences by an Information Minister who is still smarting from being ‘downsized’”.
In the unpublished column seen by Stabroek News, Singh had said that the opposition PPP/C had embarked on a course of action to ensure respect for the rules and decorum of Parliament in light of “parliamentary abuse” by Nagamootoo and others. Singh in the column cited a derogatory racial term used by Nagamootoo while speaking about former President Bharrat Jagdeo.
The remainder of the column focused on what Singh described as the “downsizing” of Nagamootoo’s role compared to what had been expected and enshrined in the Cummingsburg Accord.
The column argued that Nagamootoo’s promised powers in the Cummingsburg Accord were a mirage.
“For starters, he was simply allotted portfolio responsibilities as Minister responsible for Information with oversight pertaining to the Government Information Agency and other state-owned/operated communication agencies—Ironically, portfolios he held way back in 1992 when he was became an elected PPP parliamentarian.
“But ‘comrade’ Moses wanted–as he perhaps unwisely made public, in the spirit of the so-called ‘Cummingsburg Accord”—empowerment for “domestic national affairs, including chairing of cabinet meetings; making recommendations for ministerial appointments, as well as offering recommendations for ministries to be created by the President.
“Alas, Mr Granger is yet to make this a constitutional reality for Mr Nagamootoo. Currently the President seems busily engaged in the further constitutional empowerment of his former army colleague, ex-GDF colonel Joseph Harmon, and leaving no doubt about the reality of a two-some power status quo—he and ‘comrade’ Joe!”
