The Irfaan Ali government has been in office for nearly six months during which time there has been no post-cabinet press briefing and inconsistent engagements with media by Ali and his ministers.
According to the President of the Guyana Press Association, Nazima Raghubir this is an unacceptable continuation of a precedent set by the previous administration
“The government t is using COVID-19 to avoid press engagements and they are using a precedent set by the Granger administration to respond or grant interviews to select media houses. They are also engaging with social media commentators rather than media houses just as Mr Granger and others preferred to speak to some social media commentators,” Raghubir told Sunday Stabroek in an invited comment last evening.
She noted that the GPA had raised the matter with government via Minister with responsibility for Public Affairs Kwame McKoy since December but received no response.
Ali was also asked about the lack of post-cabinet briefings in December to which he responded that the lack of formal briefings has not affected the public’s access to information on his administration decision making.
“I think the one thing we have doing is keeping in constant touch with the people. All aspects of all discussion from Cabinet has been communicated to the people,” he contended.
Leader of the Opposition Joseph Harmon has disagreed.
During his own weekly press conference on Monday Harmon stressed that the Ali administration “must put out on a regular basis decisions made by government.”
“I’m still to see a discernable pattern of disclosure of information to the public on matters which the government intends to do and some of the things which they have done. What we are seeing is that you get a little snippet here and a snippet there but it is not enough to be able to make an informed analysis,” he said while contrasting the actions of the Ali administration with that of the newly installed Joseph Biden administration which has held daily press briefings.
A scheduled Presidential “Address to the Nation” yesterday on COVID-19 and the ongoing detention of Guyanese fishermen in Venezuela morphed into a public briefing of which media houses were not informed and to which they were not invited.
The address was announced yesterday morning and media practitioners were advised that it could be viewed on the Office of the President’s Facebook page and television networks around Guyana.
Twenty minutes after the scheduled start time Ali addressed the Nation and indicated that he would take questions.
The general public and media operatives were told that they could submit questions via the comment section of the live feed or through the Department of Public Information Whatsapp group. It then fell to the moderator Edward Layne to curate the questions presented for answers.
