Dear Editor
I fully agree with Kit Nascimento who recently observed that “we are a remarkably free country when it comes to the public expression of opinions by small groups of people who set themselves up to speak with political authority while representing no one in particular and are given a platform in our national newspapers.” This freedom, however, is being doubly abused, first by the media in Guyana, and secondly by groups such as Article 13 (A13).
With regards to the former, I refer you to Frederick Kissoon’s column (“Open letter to Isabelle DeCaires and Ian McDonald) in Kaieteur New, October 7, 2022.
Regarding Article 13, I think Nascimento posed a pertinent question when he asked “…how should a small group without any evidence of significant popular support be taken seriously, using an article of our Constitution to give them the right to pronounce upon the political performance of the elected government of the day and the major opposition?”
In essence, what we have in Guyana is a small outfit with unknown groundings, and with no public support, that is given full licence by media establishments to publish monumentally false information about governance in Guyana.
Operatives who defend Article 13 say that they (A13) are a civil society group dedicated to transparency and democracy. Yet, the only thing Article 13 has done to date is to hold up a few pickets in and around Georgetown. These pickets with about four or five people are then photographed for display in the media. They often get the front page. The photographs are accompanied by some quotations by the nominal leader of A13, most of which are well beyond verification by even the minimum journalistic standards.
Article 13 seems to relish praise from foreign NGOs and other neo-colonial-type organisations that dabble in the Global South, mostly looking for some measure of redemption. These groups are sometimes referred to as “international watchdog groups.” Many of the local institutional protectors (in the media) of Article 13 have close connections to foreign interests (that is, the same “international watchdog groups”) that want oil and gas to remain a monopoly of the Western world.
Given the totality of circumstances, namely, insufficient information about the groundings of Article 13, its penchant for wild, emotional statements that are never supported by evidence, as well as its persistent attacks on the national interest of Guyana, might one not ask – is Article 13 a form of fake news?

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Randy Persaud