Is this what the Stabroek News has come to?
I AM glad I have been around a long time. What I have seen in this country makes me want to live on and on so these things can make my life less boring. You look around Guyana today and you cast your mind back 40 years ago and you wonder where the flowers have gone.
The Stabroek News (SN) was the magical moment in the late 1980s when President Hoyte gave it a licence to start a newspaper. You have to live through that moment to see it. It was a pyrotechnical return to the monarchial days of the Portuguese in Guyana. DeCaires was treated with royalty by the society in general.

People from all types of social classes would seek out DeCaires and implore that he carried what they had to say or carried something about them. The press vacuum in Guyana at that time was filled by the little Catholic Standard edited by the imitable Jesuit priest, Father Andrew Morrison. When SN was born, Guyanese flocked to it and the SN became a virtual power onto itself in Guyana.
I became a columnist for SN in 1988 and what I heard from my parents, my elder siblings and visitors to our home about the absolute domination of Guyanese by the commercial Portuguese class, I saw at SN. One incident will forever stand out at SN for me.
Mr. DeCaires’ daughter and her friend, the daughter of the CEO for Omai Goldmines, took over the paper for a Sunday edition, and literally ran the newspaper saturating it with light things they chose while the journalistic staff just had to give way (God! I should really write my memoir).
The decline of the SN began when the Kaieteur News was born and decided to compete with SN and virtually knocked it off the numero uno spot. After Hoyte opened up the economy, then democracy returned with free and fair election, profound class changes took place in Guyana.

The old, Indian petty bourgeoisie was resurrected, a new social class was born- the nouveau riche – and Guyana’s closed economy had died with Guyana now embracing the modern world. Things were happening quickly that people no longer saw the SN as the powerhouse it once was. The aura that SN had began to melt. Today more people look at online news entities than SN and KN. All the young people I see on the seawall each night are on their smart phones.
Today, SN stands as a shell of itself. The founders are dead. The family has relocated to other countries and the paper limps on. It is the only one of the four dailies in Guyana that you cannot read for free online. Dr. Bobby Ramroop owns the Guyana Times; it is free online. Glenn Lall owns Kaieteur News, it is free online; and so is the Chronicle.

This is testimony to SN’s financial precipice. One of the largest ironies of modern politics in Guyana is that state advertisements keep SN alive. SN finds comfort in its dwindling existence from the comments by a school of sycophants who attach their comments to the letter section and heap servile praise on the paper. By some weird, psychic contortion, SN’s management believes these sycophants.
So the latest addition to join the school of praising loyalists is none other than Vishnu Bisram. When you were around at the time of the reign of SN and you see today how it desperately seeks out such panegyrics from dubious people without any credibility in Guyana then it is truly a pathetic, ignominious decline of a once great newspaper.

SN carried a letter last Sunday of Bisram praising the newspaper and SN no doubt deliberately gave it the headline: “An editorial policy rooted in truth, fairness, balance and right to reply.” I could imagine the gleam on the face of the Editor-in-Chief as he assigned that title to Bisram’s letter. The entire letter is a cringing, slavish, nauseating eulogy of SN. It really disgusts you to think a newspaper would publish such self-serving praise of itself.
There is no way any self-respecting newspaper would publish such a letter. Newspapers just don’t publish such sycophantic sermons about itself. But even if such an outpouring came from an Ian Mc Donald, one would understand it and understand SN fervor in publishing it. McDonald is a Guyanese icon.

But surely not Vishnu Bisram, the man who wrote that he has six Masters Degrees and six doctorates. Mr. Bisram in that very letter went on to criticise me, calling me an idiotic columnist. Bisram as host has, frequently, had as guests on his social media programme, Globe Span, Vincent Alexander, Timothy Jonas and Ravi Dev. I wonder if they believe Bisram has 12 higher degrees. Do you?

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.