Dear Editor,
I OF COURSE expected the Stabroek News Editor, Mr. Anand Persaud, to respond to my letter in defence of his newspaper’s, very obvious, to any of its readers, anti-government, anti-PPP/C editorial policy.
Rather, however, than a professional to-the-point response, we got, instead, a lengthy ad-hominem, personal attack, on me which had absolutely nothing to do with the newspaper’s editorial policy. I did not expect that Mr. Persaud would descend to that level.
I am, however, not the issue, as Mr. Persaud has sought to make me out to be. He leaves me no option, however, but to indulge him.
Yes, it’s public knowledge that I was a member of Mr. Burnham’s Cabinet and, yes, I was the Executive Chairman of the GPCA under President Desmond Hoyte’s government and, yes, though it has never been proved, I acknowledge that both the Burnham and Hoyte governments manipulated the vote to stay in office.
I will defend my position for remaining in the Burnham and Hoyte governments more fully in my Memoirs which I hope will be published before the end of this year. But, suffice it to say now, that, at the time, the choice was clear to me and many other prominent and respected Guyanese, amongst them, Sir Shridath Ramphal, Rashleigh Jackson and Hubert Jack, either our country descend into a Communist Cuba like dictatorship wedded to the Soviet Union under a Jagan government and ultimately be invaded by Venezuela with the support of the American government or support the Burnham/Hoyte government, both of which, importantly, were supported in office by the US and UK governments. I should, perhaps, remind, that I joined the Burnham government after the PNC/United Force government folded.
Yes, I fully support President Mohamed Ali’s PPP/C government of today which no longer embraces the Communist Socialist policy of the past PPP and, in any event, Mr. Persaud cannot speak, as he presumes to do, for either Cheddi or Janet Jagan.
The Stabroek News Editor refers to the fact that “the newspaper is defending a lawsuit brought by former President Granger over the contents of a letter by Mr. Nascimento which was published by Stabroek News.”
Dishonestly, he neglects to point out, however, that I am the principal defender in the lawsuit for alleged libel brought by former President David Granger against me, the Stabroek News, the Kaieteur News and the Guyana Times for publishing not one letter, but many I wrote in defence of our country’s democracy against the APNU government’s attempt to rig the Region Four tabulation of the last election.
Myself and many others have volunteered as witnesses in the current court trial of the GECOM officers accused of rigging those elections but, notably, the Stabroek News Editor is not amongst those who have volunteered to give evidence.
Again, nowhere in my letter have I said that Mr. Ram’s views are those of the Stabroek News. What I did say is that Stabroek News has provided a platform to Mr. Ram as a regular columnist to air his anti-government opinions, and one has to presume that the newspaper endorses the views expressed by its regular columnist unless it specifically states otherwise.
No, I do not believe and never suggested that the Stabroek News, or for that matter any newspaper, should be “a cheerleader” for any government, but neither should it be the unapologetic cheerleader for the political opposition, which the Stabroek News has become, that is, if the newspaper wishes to claim to be objective.
Yours sincerely,
Kit Nascimento