— Because they only know to write  lies
— Adam admits to apologising to Finance Minister
I HAVE known that Adam Harris was an abusive liar for years, ever since he was my boss as Editor-in-Chief of the Guyana Chronicle under the PNC regime. I was prepared to be professional, but Adam wanted me to write lies, which I refused to do, so he tortured me every day, demeaned me in every possible way; but what broke the camel’s back was when he threatened to demote me to a junior journalist. I walked off the job without a cent, nor did I ever go back for my salary.
I had sold my bookstore and everything of value that I owned to pay legal fees for my former husband, who had been remanded to prison on a murder charge.  My house had been burnt a year prior (after three attempts in two weeks). I had a husband in prison, whom I had to maintain, a daughter in Queen’s College, and a son doing his practicals on his engineering course; so one could gauge the depth of torment he put me through to force me to leave my job with no money and no prospects, and with such overwhelming responsibilities.
But anyone who knows me knows I don’t bear malice and choose to be cordial even to those who have harmed me – then.  Nowadays I prefer to have no relationship with anyone except within the scope of work.
Years passed and I neither saw nor heard from Adam, but then my daughter ironically ended up in the same situation that I was in and her family issue became news; but while I had stoically borne my situation, I am a mother and I have no apologies for fighting for my child.  Whenever the authorities harassed my daughter, who had never been politically inclined, but was only carrying out her duties as a wife, I informed the media, including Adam when the person assigned to cover that beat, Dale Andrews, was not reachable, but especially Julia Johnson, because she liked my daughter and related to her as a woman; and eventually the powers-that-be began to respect her and stopped harassing her.
After that situation was resolved, I probably called Adam about twice on job-related matters, as associates. Apart from that I was trying to retrieve family pictures that media operatives had borrowed without returning. However, I kept away from him completely when he told my daughter lies that he said I told him, God knows for what reason, and she and I quarrelled, because he was so convincing that she believed him over me, which upset me terribly.  Until this day I cannot fathom why he chose to unnecessarily cause strife in my family.
We met subsequently a couple of times at press conferences and were pleasant to each other.
One day I was stuck for transportation after lunch at the EU ambassador’s home so he gave me a ride to Chronicle.  While chatting along the way we spoke of our mutual political loyalties and I explained that I was loyal to the PPP because of my deep love for Dr. Jagan and my conviction that there is no other viable alternative to effective governance of Guyana, despite the fact that the PPP treat my family and I with disdain, citing the case of my son and daughter, both single parents who had applied years ago for house lots, which never materialised.
This is the only truth in all the garbage that he wrote about me.  I had never spoken to Adam about problems at Chronicle, nor would I do so. Chronicle is riddled with Adam’s spies – spies on the whole, who are very unethical and unprincipled, as this following quotation from a Gerhardt Ramsaroop blog would prove: Gerhardt wrote: “By the way, Parvati, how do you think I knew it was you writing Pandora’s Box? It was one of your own who told me – the person added that you are after the job of editor at the Chronicle and this is why you are in overdrive. Besides, do you know how much information against you all come from the inside? You have no idea how much you all are reviled behind your backs by the people who have to put[up] with you just to ensure bread on their tables. Many of these people too, you all assume to be your supporters, but they have seen enough to know what the PPP is about and want no part of it.”
Someone called to tell me that Harris wrote some nasty things about me in his gutter column, where he committed sacrilege on one of the holiest names in the Hindu lexicon, and alluded to me with some extremely sexist remarks.  I do not read that column and I did not see what exactly he wrote, but all those persons who have encouraged me to make an issue of it needs to understand one thing.  The Adam Harrisses’ of this world are shameless.  They would glory in their infamy.
Yes, one would like to ask what happened to all those women’s rights groups who jump on any bandwagon to protest against the government or its functionaries, as they did for Livan recently, despite the fact that the woman acted contrary to the law, and what the Minister did was mild compared to what Adam Harris wrote about me; but then Harris is one of their own, and everyone knows that their real agenda is not about human or women’s rights, but about bringing down the government, and they are all part of the opposition cabal.  They have lost every shred of their credibility long ago, and this concretises this fact.  They don’t see me as a professional woman being abused with sexist remarks.  They see me as a government media operative who transgressed against one of their own.  If Mark Ramotar had written such terrible things against a female journalist from the opposition media, the protest would have been loud and instant.
About my writing and analytic abilities, Harris wrote: “Late last week it was my turn to attract a few words from her pen, and the issue reinforced my view that she was either incapable of understanding the spoken word, or deaf, or delusionary or simply stupid, and the latter is not a word I use lightly when I refer to people.”
Harris uses all kinds of defamatory words lightly when he alludes to people he does not like, and stupid is the least of it.
Whether I am incapable of understanding the spoken word, or deaf, or delusionary is left to those who have been reading my writings over the years to judge.
But suffice it to say that, when former President Hoyte was constrained to restructure the Chronicle as part of the IMF deal to release further funds, he instructed then Editor-in-Chief Ronald Austin to hire the four best writers in the country, based on the top literary prize-winners listed in the National History and Arts Council.  Guess who were chosen? Roy Brummel, Attorney-at-Law Cleveland Hamilton, Rooplall Monar and Parvati Persaud-Edwards, and when my first feature appeared, both President Hoyte and (I think, if I remember correctly) then Information Minister Yvonne Harewood- Benn called me personally to thank me for what they termed the best article they had read for a long time.  Ronald Austin would confirm this.
So an Adam Harris saying that I cannot write is wishful thinking on his part, and on the part of all those who have tried to block my writing career.
At the conclusion of the NICIL debate, the Finance Minister challenged Harris on something that Harris had published about him, which he admitted, then he apologised. Whether the apology is a fabric of my imagination, based on the natural expectation that any decent person would follow up such an admission by gracefully saying “sorry” is moot, because Harris indicted Kaieteur News for carrying untruths by his admission, as did his boss, K/News publisher Glenn Lall, when he conceded that his newspaper does carry misinformation, which he tries to defend as freedom of expression because it is the (opposition) politicians that provide the information that he is constrained to carry.
Bull!  And they scream “lies” about Chronicle’s story.  On what moral ground can they judge the Guyana Chronicle?
These people have relentlessly demonised public figures they perceive as working along with the government, making the wildest of accusations without any valid proof and causing tremendous distress not only to their victims but also to their families.
Their lurid stories that they concoct out of thin air drive investors away, as attested to by Winston Brassington, just as this country is recovering from a devastated economy and is on a socio-economic upswing.
Their “Dem boys Seh” should be “Dem girls Seh” because that Adam Harris column is more like a bunch of women intent on tearing down their rivals at a gossip-fest.  It is worse than the effluent thrown on Freddie, and even more miasmic, but then look from what mind it emanates.
I did hear Adam Harris apologise to the Finance Minister.  He can call me all the names that he wants.  Whether that apology was for lying or for professional misconduct, because it was a split second confrontation, is same difference; because he did admit earlier in the interview that he published untruths, or misinformation, so all he is doing is splitting hairs to save face: But for someone stupid like me, who cannot understand words, untruths and misinformation translate into lies or dishonesty.
Adam wrote the joke of the century: “If the PPP administration is of the view that people should be vilified in the name of politics, then I would be less inclined to believe that such a political party should lead this country.”  My God, I can write reams of the persons vilified in the name of politics by the opposition and its media satellites, including and especially Kaieteur News, Winston Brassington being the latest victim.
As for Moses Nagamootoo, he once called me a fantastic journalist, and he knows how many times Dr. or Mrs. Jagan have called on me to write on an issue, even while they had him, and the times he accompanied Mrs. Jagan to personally congratulate me on an article that I wrote, so for him to describe my writing as drivel makes him a hypocrite, which I had deduced long before the PPP discovered that he was one.
Adam himself wrote: “For his part, the Finance Minister gets angry when he is accused of doing something that he has not done. I felt the brunt of his tongue when I published or caused to be published that he had signed a document when in fact he did not.” Now is that not peddling misinformation, which a stupid person like me would be inclined to call a lie?
He continued: “He said nothing when Parvati wrote what she did. Perhaps he considered the writings of a fool something to ignore.
“But then again, he perhaps concluded that I could see the situation for what it was, and take the appropriate action.”  The Finance Minister, one of the most erudite, articulate and intelligent persons that I know, thinks that I am an exceptional writer, and the only action that he would conclude that Harris would take is to see the error of his ways and mend them.
As for Harris’s wish to keep the pen away from me, I need to inform him that even in his dotage he should realise that we are in the computer age now, and writers use hi-tech equipment; so yes, we don’t use the pen anymore.
But my facility for writing?  Well now, that is God-given, and not even Harris’s wishful thinking can deprive me of this gift of my God from the blessings of my mother. If my writings challenge his mental acuity then, for the sake of fraternity, I would be willing to bring my writing to his level; but then he cannot understand my writing because it is based on facts, while, upon his own admission, he publishes fabrications.
And this is the last response I will make on this issue.