IN an uncertain world we live in where, after a long-sustained period of social stability, societal ease and electoral legitimacy, Guyana was driven close to the precipice for five months in 2020. Since then, Guyana’s democracy has survived but there is relentless political ugliness and moral degeneracy in the society that demands the society be on its guard.
Who threatens democracy in this country and whose instincts make us aware of that danger? If you juxtapose Kit Nascimento with the Stabroek News (SN) where does each fall – safeguarding democracy or undermining democracy? Let’s deconstruct both actors and that will come easily through an exchange between the two in the letter section of SN yesterday (Friday).
Let’s quote Nascimento: “Sadly, even though it (SN) continues to be owned by the DeCaires family, its reputation for independent and factual reporting and objective editorialising has become questionable. I have searched in vain for a Stabroek News editorial which has not been anti-government and now, in the context of elections, hostile to the PPP/C.
“Certainly, not one in support of anything which the government has or is doing nor, for that matter, the PPP/C. Whether by intent of its owners or the expressed will of its editorial management, the Stabroek News has seriously lost its way as a politically independent and objective newspaper and, unfortunately, has joined all the other newspapers of exercising a political bias in its reporting and editorialising.”
Let’s quote SN’s reply which I rather suspect was dictated by Mrs. DeCaires and written by her daughter Isabelle. I don’t think Mr. Anand Persaud, the Editor-in-Chief and Isabell DeCaires have that kind of analytical access to the politics of the early Burnham era.
Mrs. DeCaires is a product of that era. Here is SN’ rebuttal to Nascimento: “Mr Nascimento headed the Guyana Public Communications Agency (GPCA), the then PNC version of the latter-day Department of Public Information, when Stabroek News came under frequent attack from both the PNC and GPCA.
“It should also be noted that Mr Nascimento was then working for a government that had been installed by the grossest rigging of elections in the country’s history. Mr Nascimento eases quite effortlessly from his role in the 1960’s when he targeted the PPP to his new role as one of its trumpeters.”
Here is my response to SN. Where is the relevance of what Mr. Nascimento was 50 years ago? The dialectical question is who changed (SN and Nascimento) and in what direction. SN’s two founders DeCaires and Miles Fitzpatrick were quasi-Marxist in the early 1950s and throughout the 1960s, with Mr. Fitzpatrick even becoming a member of one of the tiers of the PPP.
By the turn of the 21st century, DeCaires and Fitzpatrick were shameless apologists for capitalism and imperialist penetration of Guyana and were open in their embrace of the Mulatto/Creole class (MCC).
It is against this background that they sought the help of the MCC to birth the SN. Because of Burnhamite autocracy, where there was no access to independent analysis of the contents of Guyanese society, SN was treated as a god by a depressed country but SN was never the independent forum people thought it was.
I was a columnist for five years for SN and I know how pro-West, anti-Left and conspiratorial that newspaper was. I know the endless columns that I had to rewrite because SN was subtly anti-PPP, pro-MCC and hardly interested in independent journalism.
No one in Guyana was surprised when the Kaieteur News (KN) came from very humble beginning and virtually knocked SN off its feet. KN was run by media people who were independent in their thinking and owed no loyalty to class and colour but to the sacred principles of journalism.
Mr. Nascimento from the era SN mentioned has changed considerably. His voice and pen are used in the frenetic attempt by Guyanese society to preserve Guyana’s hard-earned democracy. What has not changed over the years since its birth, is SN. It was always an elitist newspaper owned by the MMC and served the interest of the MCC. Today, Nascimento and SN sit in opposite direction.
Nascimento functions today as an actor who is involved in democratic sustenance. The physiology of SN in today’s Guyana jeapordises democratic stability. Nascimento is a nationalist that chooses country over party. SN sees party and country as the same; this explains its journalistic degeneracy. It would have been the decent thing for SN to do to simply answer Nascimento’s questions about the non-stop insane anti-government editorials.
I will have to continue this discussion because it is important that the Guyanese people understand the subtle dangers to their democracy and where it comes from. It certainly doesn’t come from Kit Nascimento.

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.