Buried in a presidential address lasting all of 78 minutes on Wednesday was the nugget that the Public Service Commission would be set up before the end of the week. For the rest President Ali expounded on what was happening in various sectors of the economy, a topic the media was hardly unfamiliar with, except that this time the peroration was interspersed with admonitory lectures directed at the reporters in attendance. This was the head of state’s first press conference in months, which raised expectations in the media about at last being able to get answers to a range of questions which had been accumulating in the interim. It was not to be.
Each media house was restricted to one question and one follow-up, and after one round had been completed moderator Kit Nascimento announced that the press conference was at an end. As press conferences go in recent times, this qualified as one of the least satisfactory from an information point of view. Given all the other questions which had to be asked, no one was able to follow up on the one item which stood out from the speech, i.e. the reconstitution of the PSC. All that could be gleaned was a fleeting reference to the fact that this paved the way for the setting up of the Judicial Service Commission, and that the Police Service Commission would now have its full complement of members.
If President Ali escaped a grilling on a matter he himself had raised, given the arrangements he was not caused too much discomfiture on topics he had not mentioned in his address. The questions lasted for 50 minutes, but of course included in the group were the state media and other media houses sympathetic to the ruling party, none of which would have subjected him to anything like penetrating queries.
While the independent media have often expressed themselves dissatisfied with the President’s lack of accessibility and were undoubtedly equally unhappy with the organization of the press conference, Mr Ali was having none of it. “I have to be honest; it is unfortunate for the media to say they don’t see me. Every single opportunity I have an engagement and the media comes to me I speak with them, I spend a lot of time with the media…” he said.
Guyana Press Association President Nazima Raghubir commented that it was the dedicated press engagements which were lacking, but President Ali brushed this aside saying it was a matter of the availability of the President as well as the media. He said he was always approached by journalists on the sidelines of events, although as we observed in our report on the conference, it was not always the case that when questions were asked on such occasions they were necessarily answered. We cited the example of the commissioning of Good Hope Secondary School, when journalists from both this newspaper and Kaieteur News approached the President, and they were told he was not in a position to take questions; he had another engagement.
And then came the most extraordinary excuse for not engaging the media. It was all about time and time management, said the head of state, which were very important in the working world. The nation had reached a stage, he went on to say, where every second was important, and although he would “love to spend time with the media every week,” time did not permit. Our report did ask with a measure of acerbity why if time was so limited 78 minutes were spent on what he wanted to say, and so little allowed for asking questions. It would seem to be a reversal of the normal convention applying to press conferences.
But more was to come. A new work culture had to be developed the reporters were told, and everyone should adjust to that. “You have to understand, society and environment evolve … the economy is complex now; you have to read multiple documents … you have to stay on top of your game. It doesn’t happen by guesswork,” said President Ali. No one imagined that it did. It can only be remarked that other heads of government read multiple documents too, particularly if they govern large, complex societies, and yet still they manage to engage with the press on a regular basis, and answer their questions.
The time excuse is all nonsense. The Fourth Estate is there as a watchdog where the government is concerned, and if the President refuses to allow the time to answer its questions, then it cannot perform its primary function. Governments in democracies are supposed to be transparent and accountable, and avoiding answering media questions is indicative of trying to avoid accountability.
Governments make mistakes, such as in President Ali’s case by failing to act in a way which is in consonance with the Constitution regarding the JSC (among other things). It is the duty of the press to ask questions about that, and it the duty of the head of state to answer them. At its most extreme, refusing to answer questions relating to critical issues on the grounds of time unavailability is to devise a novel way of restricting the media. It is through the media that the public learns about what their government is doing – or not doing – and there can be no viable democracy if there is no free press which has access to the President in particular.
Many years ago the late Editor in Chief of this newspaper, David de Caires wrote in an editorial that there was a “reflexive aversion” on the part of officialdom (not just presidents) to answering queries because the assumption was that the aim was to cause embarrassment or inflict damage. If nothing was said, therefore, then nothing unflattering would get into the public domain at all, something which was not true, he said. Nevertheless, not being open “can be just as delimiting as imposing more traditional curbs.”
The media has to be given space to perform its function in a supposedly free society. President Ali’s problem is not that reporters need to develop a better work culture; it is that he personally needs to apply better time management.
