I DON’T know if Dr. Bertrand Ramcharran ever sent a note to the editor of Stabroek News, Mr. Anand Persaud, rebuking him for referring to me as a PPP lap dog. I hope he did because he sent an email to me asking me not to criticise Mike McCormack, the forever head of the non-existent, Guyana Human Rights Association.

Nigel Westmaas, an ideologue for the Mulatto/Creole class joined Mr. Persaud and described me as a PPP attack dog. The latest description of me comes from so-called journalist and head of a disgraceful entity named the Guyana Press Association. She says I have a paymaster.

Here is the narrative of people like Persaud, Westmaas and Raghubir. If you write positively about the Government of Guyana you are a lap dog, and an attack dog that has a source funding you. If you write negatively about the government, then, your work is commendable. This is the binary that people like Persaud, Westmass, Raghubir want people to digest.

In the absence of a counter-narrative, there is the danger that innocent minds can buy into this political nastiness of Persaud, Westmaas, Raghubir and others like Mike Mc Cormack, Vanda Radzik-Veira, her sister Danuta, Alicia Trotz and a school of anti-government activists.

Here is the curiosity that is destroying my mind. If the government has its quota of attack/lap dogs, then by simple logical deduction, there have to be such servants residing on other horizons in Guyana. Using unambiguous grammar, Ms. Raghubir describes prominent journalist, Neil Marks, as abandoning journalism for a “few silver coins.”

So are there attack/lap dogs in other quarters in Guyana and who are in the pocket of their paymasters? I am now putting specific names to Persaud, Westmaas, and Raghubir. Mr. Mike McCormack is a virulent and relentless critic of the government. Is he an attack dog for people who have an anti-government agenda?

Westmaas is a very close personal friend of David Hinds. Hinds can easily be described as a frenetic anti-government hater. Does Westmaas accept that the label of attack dog fits Hinds? And does Hinds have a paymaster? Let’s move to Rahgubir’s close friend, Denis Chabrol of Demerara Waves.

It is true that Chabrol’s outfit has been purchased by Mr. GHK Lall, former chairman of the Gold Board? Lall is irrationally hostile to the Guyana Government and has a niche at Kaieteur News and Stabroek News. If Lall is the owner of Demerara Waves, then Chabrol should tell us if it is true that who pays the pier calls the tune.

Mr. Anand Persaud has the temerity refer to me as a PPP lap dog. Mr. Persaud operates with a political perspective as I do, only his pen goes in the opposite direction. I write as pro-government. Persaud, as editor of the Stabroek News, adumbrates a relentless anti-government stance.

So is Persaud a lap dog for the owners of Stabroek News and is he in their pockets? As we are on ownership, can Persaud tell us who are the paper’s owners and who are on its board of directors. I asked the newspaper’s legal adviser, Timothy Jonas, for the names of the members of the board. He said the only name he can remember is his own. Ask me if I believe Jonas.

Now interestingly, the newspaper has as its legal adviser and as a member of its board, a person who is the leader of an opposition party, ANUG. Now I do not belong to any party; I am not employed by the PPP or the Government of Guyana; I have no attachment even remotely to anything connected to the government and I am not a paid employee of the Chronicle.

But because my education leads to me to see the government as a democratic achiever, I have become, according to Anand Persaud, a PPP lap dog; according to Nigel Westmaas, a PPP attack dog; and according to Nazima Raghubir, a person doing the bidding of a paymaster.

So I now turn to Ms. Raghubir and ask her why do I have a paymaster? I know her answer. Because I write in support of the government. But Raghubir’s work is in favour of the opposition. She writes in praise of a notorious anti-government newspaper, the Kaieteur News. Who is Ms. Raghubir’s paymaster?

She says she believes the comical, laughable story of an anti-government “journalist,” Travis Chase, who bigs up himself by claiming there was an assassination attempt on him. If Ms. Raghubir can believe that, she is unfit to report the news. But then again, so many in this country are unfit to report the news.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.