-Minister McCoy calls out veteran journalist for using journalism to push his political agenda and sowing seeds of ethnic division; debunks mistruths

THE latest attempt by Adam Harris to use journalism as a means to implant his personal political narratives in news reports has been called out by Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister, Kwame McCoy.
In a recent statement, the Minister grilled Harris for straying away from the upright principles of journalism.
It should be mentioned that the Minister was referring to an article written by Harris with the ‘screaming’ headline: “It is now clear that the government wants to destroy black people.”

McCoy labelled Harris’ verbiage as “highly sensational, misplaced, and irresponsible.” However, this sort of “objectionable” headline is nothing new with Harris, the Minister noted.
Harris has held key leadership positions in the fourth estate such as in the Guyana Press Association (GPA), he served as editor-in-chief at the Guyana Chronicle under the People’s National Congress-Reform (PNCR)’s governance and subsequently at, Kaieteur News.

While one has the right to support any political party, the issue lies when credibility is misplaced and media reporting is being manipulated into an outlet to feed the populace political narratives, McCoy explained.
The Minister said: “Unfortunately, given the ethnic polarisation Adam’s party has wrought on this nation, he was able to call himself a journalist, a leading one to boot, and get away with similar politically motivated and driven propaganda for years,” while pointing to a popular instance of Harris’ blatant disregard for journalism ethics.

Minister McCoy then debunked the mistruths that were splattered within the news report, which has been published by multiple Opposition-aligned personalities and entities.
While several government officials have already spoken extensively on the resolved Mocha-Arcadia squatters’ matter, line by line, within the article, Harris attempted to paint a completely different picture, one which Minister McCoy has now shut down.

The Minister said, the truth of the matter, that even Harris knows, is that the governing People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) engaged the 35 affected Mocha-Arcadia squatters in an extensive consultative process which led to fair compensation for properties and crops, allocation of land, relocation and construction assistance, and the issuance of titles.
For further clarity, those squatters were in the path of a highway, which has been set out to ease the frustrations of Guyanese who are affected by the traffic woes on the East Bank of Demerara (EBD).

McCoy stated that each of the affected persons who were squatting in the path of the highway, specifically along the lands that would envelop the highway which were designated as part of a new commercial corridor; was offered compensatory payment commensurate with the estimated market value of their property totalling $250,050,000 among them and varying additional sums for crops totalling $5,103,009 among the beneficiaries who had viable cops. Assigned lots were valued between 300,000 (size 48×84) and 1.2 million (size 46 x 100). By midway through the consultative process, 20 persons readily accepted what they agreed were fair offers and assistance and relocated from the area in question without issues.

He said that at the time of the demolition exercise, of the remaining 15 persons, eight of them had also accepted the relocation package and were at varying stages of moving to their newly assigned house lots, however, seven remained defiantly opposed and “aggressively resistant” at the behest of the PNCR leadership who had successfully coerced them to take the sacrificial stance as “ethnic pawns for the race-hate political campaign of the party.”

The Minister firmly stated that the aforementioned are facts, which are contained in the chronological timeline dossier of events, with full details of all engagements and measures the government exercised with the squatters, and are publicly available on the website of the Ministry of Housing and Water.
Further, he noted that now the ministry has started moving to allocate commercial plots along the highway’s economic shoulders to local investors, Guyanese from the diaspora, and others whose expressions of interest are part of an extensive backlog in the ministry’s system.

“Meanwhile, Harris and the band of political communicators and disinformation peddlers aligned to Congress Place and the other halls of the opposition marauders, continue to spew their race hate hogwash as part of their early general elections campaign tactics,” Minister McCoy said while adding that like the settled Mocha- Arcadia issue, and that aside, nothing else among the many anecdotal matters raised in Harris’ article offers a scintilla of evidence or facts to support the “dubious” headline.

Adding to this, the reporting by Harris fails to give coverage of not only the diversity within the government’s cabinet, which the Opposition’s leadership has been put on blast for lacking, but also the developmental changes that have occurred under President, Dr Irfaan Ali’s leadership.
Keeping on target to pour cold water on the claims within Harris’ article, the Minister said that more than half of the more than 35,000 house lots allocated since 2020 and the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) scholarships are being enjoyed by Guyanese of African descent.

Further, the Ministry of Labour (MoL), through its agency, the Board of Industrial Training (BIT), has been executing equitable skills training for thousands of Guyanese youths across the country; the mortgage interest rate reductions and raised loan ceilings are for the benefit of all Guyanese; the myriad of tax reductions, school meals, eye testing vouchers, and school-based cash grants are benefitting all eligible Guyanese children who are still in school.

He also noted that entrepreneurial and economic opportunities have been opening up to all who can tap in for the establishment of businesses, and wide-ranging employment opportunities are available to all qualified citizens, while public infrastructure and services contracts are more widely open across ethnic groups than any time before in Guyana’s independent history, nationally, regionally and at the community levels.
“So, the words in Harris’ whistle-blowing headlines are exactly what they are, another naked and vulgar attempt by an opposition propagandist to sow seeds of ethnic division and discord among a nation otherwise engrossed in nation-building, empowerment pursuits, inter-generational wealth creation, and national sustainable unity.

“Adam Harris et al must realise sooner rather than later that these unpatriotic machinations of theirs in the opposition will continue to fail, while the hearts and minds of the vast majority of Guyanese will continue the noble quests that our forefathers and the architects of our independence envisioned for our beloved Guyana,” Minister McCoy said.