IMAGINE taking your friend to the local hardware store, where on display is a plethora of screwdrivers. You then tell your friend they must leave because the store doesn’t sell screwdrivers. Here in Guyana, every year when World Press Freedom Day arrives, the Western embassies issue statements on the occasion but I have never seen a press release from these embassies advising media entities that their professionalism needs to be improved and that Guyana enjoys a huge latitude in press freedom.

I don’t have any contacts with the officials of the British, Canadian, American and EU diplomats (ABCEU). I have eschewed the company of those people since I became a recognisable name in Guyana and that was since 1974, when I became a determined voice for democracy as a left-wing student at UG.

Since 1974, I have not attended a function put on by the ABCEU mission. Since 1974 there have been sporadic encounters with some Western diplomats, with the highest point being dinner with one of them at his request at the Pegasus. He wanted to talk about politics.

There are three reasons for this posture. One is I have always shunned those events because it hurts my psyche to see how learned, important Guyanese would gravitate toward those diplomats in a sycophantic way as if they are inferior humans to these Western diplomats. Yet when these diplomats leave, they become obscure figures of no national importance in their own countries, while the Guyanese of substance still remain people of worth in their own country.

Secondly, I think those diplomats are very condescending in their attitude to the Guyanese who seek their company. I remember Moses Nagamootoo autographed a copy of his first autobiography for the Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in 2019. The gentleman gave away the book when he was leaving and it ended up in my hand.

I cannot detect the whole name because of the way Nagamootoo wrote it. But I think the first name was Mark. Give me the Indian and Chinese diplomats any day. The third reason is that I have never had a strong socialisation instinct, which died as I grew older.

The ABCEU diplomats are very close to the anti-government media and the embassies are very generous to them. For example, six months after arriving in Guyana, the current EU head gave the editor of the Stabroek News, the Embassy’s Annual Human Rights Award. I was drinking coffee when I read it and the split substance burned my legs. Could that ambassador tell Guyanese what Mr. Persaud did in the area of human rights to earn that accolade?

Here is a second example. When globally known media houses go down to Third World countries to do research, they normally would contact the local embassy of their country. So when the BBC did a HardTalk episode on oil in Guyana, it was the British High Commission that facilitated Vanda Radzik as an interviewee. It was the American embassy that selected a man named Bailey (can’t remember his first name; either he is not known in Guyana or I am getting Alzheimer’s) for CNN to interview on Guyana’s oil.  It was the British High Commission that recommended Stabroek News editor to be a panelist on Guyana on the BBC World Questions programme.

Today, journalistic freedom takes in the irony of ironies. Newspapers are openly anti- government, throwing their independent instinct into the gutter. Today, two private newspapers -Kaieteur News and Stabroek News – appear in the eyes of the Guyanese people as opposition parties rather than media houses.

There is more anti-government venom in these two newspapers than in the major opposition parties. Several people have said to me that the Stabroek News carry the fight to the government more than the PNC.  To say that Guyana hasn’t got a climate of journalistic freeness is tantamount to saying there isn’t a president in the US named Donald Trump. Here is one graphic example where press freedom in Guyana is being abused.

The Stabroek News ran a letter by Mr. Lincoln Lewis in its Monday edition with the head line: “Guyana’s territorial integrity cannot be defended by a population who feel excluded from its prosperity.” This is dangerous anti-government propaganda that no newspaper should highlight when a country is facing invasion.

In times of outside aggression from another country, the media draws a line which holds free speech to be responsible. Who says Guyana’s territorial integrity cannot be defended by Guyanese? Who does Mr. Lewis speak for? Who tells Mr. Lewis that Guyanese do not share in its oil wealth? Why was there no editorial note asking Mr. Lewis for his statistics?  The Stabroek News and Mr. Lewis are enemies at the gate.