THE OPPOSITION People’s Progressive Party (PPP), which had withheld advertisements from private newspapers while in office, is now complaining about press censorship.PPP General Secretary Clement Rohee told a news conference at Freedom House on Monday that persons of various political hues and shades are voicing their concerns and reservations over the role and content of “the state-controlled Chronicle newspaper”.

He alleged that press censorship is being driven from the Office of the Prime Minister in particular, and the Ministry of Presidency in general.

“The People’s Progressive Party is the only political party that hosts a weekly press conference at which one or two press statements are read and (are) subjected to questioning by journalists present. The statements are promptly sent electronically to all media houses…. These statements and/or releases are usually either edited or never published by the Guyana Chronicle, the Kaieteur News, or the Stabroek News,” Rohee said.

As recent as October 2015, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo had called for supporters of the opposition People’s Progressive Party to stop buying newspapers which do not support the views of that party.

“Please ensure that our people don’t buy newspapers where the sole purpose of the newspaper is to destroy your party,” Jagdeo said at an event on October 5, 2015.

But the PPP statement on Monday noted: “What censorship basically does is to deny Guyanese readers another view apart from the official view which appears to take pre-eminence over the non-official view, including those of the PPP. When the PPP was in office, press censorship was virtually non-existent, save for a few occurrences which cannot be described as press censorship.”

In 2008, Jagdeo, while in office, banned journalist Gordon Moseley from the then Office of the President after accusing him of being biased against the PPP Government. The ban was eventually lifted by Jagdeo’s successor, former President Donald Ramotar, in 2011.