YOU can’t help thinking how funny life is in this country. I mean, without this funny side, Guyana would be seriously boring. Mr. Anand Persaud, the editor-in-chief of the Stabroek News (SN) and the paper’s co-owner (along with Ms. Isabelle DeCaires, the daughter of the paper’s founder, David DeCaires), described me as a PPP lapdog.

This is an intriguing appellation, the reason being that I have absolutely no presence in any shape or form whatsoever in the ruling party and have no presence in any shape or form whatsoever in the entire state structure of Guyana. I don’t even sit on the board of most peripheral state institution. I don’t know a large percentage of the new PPP central committee and have never spoken to a number of Cabinet members.
So why am I a PPP lapdog and the same label is not applied to Mr. Persaud himself for being an opposition lapdog who runs a paper that is appallingly anti-government? SN has not even a monthly independent columnist. All of its columnists are anti-government. Mr. Ralph Ramkarran’s weekly piece is a reproduction of his blog.

I monitor the comments attached to the letters in the online edition of SN and the term “insanely hostile” is strikingly appropriate to describe those who give their opinions. I seldom see pro-government opinions carried. For every 100 comments published, 99 are anti-government.
For the past ten years, SN has carried a weekly column titled In The Diaspora (ITD) edited by dye-in-the wool WPA stalwart, Dr. Alissa Trotz. Here is what the strap line of ITD says: “This is a series of weekly columns from Guyanese in the diaspora with an interest in issues related to Guyana.”
Now let’s go inside the diaspora and inside the politics of Alissa Trotz. First, there has never been a column from ITD that has looked favourably at any aspect of the work of the Government of Guyana since the Ali presidency came into existence in August 2020. And I literally mean, not one such column.
Secondly, something is not right here. According to the strap line, the pieces are written by people in the diaspora. But who is inside the Guyanese diaspora? It is said that roughly one million Guyanese live outside of Guyana. Since there has never been a pro-government commentary from ITD, then is Ms. Trotz telling us that the Guyanese diaspora consists of almost 100 percent of people who are inclined to criticise the administration in this land?

This is an atrocity simply because any person that is familiar with Guyana knows that in the Guyanese diaspora, there is an unlimited number of educated people who have admiration for the Ali presidency. Some of these scholars are brilliant people.  Is Ms. Trotz telling us she cannot find even one pro-government academic in Canada where she lives or in the vast land of the United States?

Some of these scholars are known to Ms. Trotz because they write letters frequently in the newspapers and they have published well-written books. They say truth is different from facts because your truth may not be my truth. So I am going to stay away, accusing Ms. Trotz of ignoring the truth about who exists inside the diaspora. The fact is that there are accomplished scholars out there in the diaspora who will write in support of the Ali presidency if asked by Ms. Trotz, but Ms. Trotz has no intention of contacting them.
Thirdly, the atrocity gets uglier when you read what the strap line says.: “This is a series of weekly columns from Guyanese in the diaspora with an interest in issues related to Guyana.” So what is “this interest in issues related to Guyana? Surely the five-month election disaster must have been one such issue. But ITD never paid any attention to the electoral disaster even though it went on for five months.

Fourthly, where is the role of the editor? After 10 years of ITD where is his professional journalism? He has to step in and tell Ms. Trotz that ITD needs to have political balance and carry different perspectives. Yet against this barefaced hypocrisy, Mr. Persaud has the temerity to refer to me as a PPP lapdog. Why is Ms. Trotz not described in the same fashion? ITD is openly anti-government. So I am going to close off by going in a direction I have never gone before. I prefer to use the methodology of factual outlay rather than truthful presentation. In this case, the truth is Mr. Persaud is anti-government, Ms. Trotz is anti-government, and independent journalism is a casualty of such hypocrisy.

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.