Dear Editor,
SN spoke. Too sharply. The government came right back at it, even sharper and louder. Action speaks; money talks. Who will balk? In view of what happened before, the outcome is foreordained from this early hour: Stabroek News will prevail.
The word from SN offers still more confirming evidence that history repeats itself. Rarely, it seems is that history about the good and encouraging; or the different and the developing. That it is of the things and people that separate for all the cleverness and coarseness of the past. Not the change hoped for, merely too much of an exchange that brings right back to the same sick place. There they are: those who took the helm, with a glint in the eye, and gaudy rhetoric to match, only to slide in the inevitable drift back into the gutter. I sensed it coming, while hoping against hope. I did so, even as there was wondering if, indeed, the old surliness and mental sickness and vindictiveness would resurface. All of those have, haven’t they, if only in degree?
I suppose that it was never a matter of if but when. Well, when is now, as in the past several months. The evidence is there: the decline in advertising revenues. Not again! But there it is, déjà vu. The power of the pen pummeled by the pressure of the purse. Perhaps, the accountants at SN had an off day, and the numbers are inaccurate. But so far off? That even, a known opposition press presence has come out ahead, when compared to SN. Some folks get by in any environment. Then again, the government people are still paying off favours owed to the opposition. It is the sleazy soap opera of the Guyana world turning. My turn, your turn. And then round and round again.
I wait to hear what the government people have to say. I suggest saying nothing at all, since foot is already in mouth. It is one dirty shoe. It stinks. But who cares, since nowadays, there is some sleek, spurious rationale to smooth over warts and scars of every depth and variety. The withholding of advertising dollars would be spun with one verbal triple axel after another. Governments are so good at such things, they look easy. But none is fooled. Count me out.
What does the government, through its DPI, desires? A free press that sounds and reads like Pravda? Chinese State media? A presence that says plenty, but represents nothing but the empty? It is the constitutional right (that dreadful beast again) of the Hon. Prime Minister to maintain silence on this surprising development. I slap myself on the side of the head: why should the severe reduction in ad dollars directed to SN come as a surprise to me? I need to return to the planet from which I came. This is Guyana. It does not matter which government is in place, the resorting to the vulgar and injuring come all too easily. It is an automatic, self-serving, reflex, given the calibre of people around this dirty, lowdown place.
Withholding advertising dollars is a cheap trick; a cowardly, dirty trick. It calls for a certain kind of thinking to imitate that line of strategizing, that prior way of conducting oneself. Tell the people at SN that what is written is not liked, nor how issues are presented. Encourage a fundamentalist (or a dozen) to counter with own arguments. They need no incentivizing.
Though he is not known to be a big talker, I ponder as to what His Excellency has to say about this advertising development. He should say something. For it is a loser’s approach, because of the loser’s odds, and record of the losers who tried this before here and elsewhere. If the president agonizes over what to say on this, then I venture a helping hand: say it cannot and will not stand. Say that my government and my people will separate from the baying mob and walk the high ground. And stay on it, come what may. Be such editorials; condemning letters; or issues and situations that cause flinching. Stick to the heights of free expressions, without the backdoor of the lowly alley. Let the voices be heard; let the facts be faced; let the realities be told, as they should. No sniping from the gutter should there be.
The problem is that there is so much of the gutter in this town, that the higher elevations are underwater. More than SN is inundated by it. All of us are, be it perpetrator or objector. Reverse that ad decision. Bring back the column inches required and the monies that go with them. And if that means answering this call to bring back Maccabees version to its rightful place and strength, then so be it.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
