THERE isn’t a human on Planet Earth that would not expect to see in their county’s newspapers a front page reporting on the likely results of the country’s general election. There isn’t a newspaper in the entire world that would not report on its front page the trends in the election counting.

No decent human would deny that is the reality in the world. No Guyanese would put his/her name to a publication that justifies what the Stabroek News (SN) did on its front page yesterday (Wednesday). Even if that person did so, they would be so ashamed to put their real name, because even their family and relatives would ostracise them.
What the SN did yesterday should cause all Guyanese to boycott this newspaper.  The owner of the Kaieteur News hates the PPP, but the front page was on Mr. Jagdeo’s assertion of a likely PPP victory yesterday. The Chronicle and Guyana Times projected a PPP victory yesterday.

The SN had four front-page items yesterday: One on the US attack on a Venezuelan boat, one on a rape conviction, another on the Farnum Playground controversy, and the other being a statement from GECOM about the official declaration.

I have been in the newspaper world in Guyana for 36 years. I know about journalism. No newspaper anywhere in the world would carry a rape conviction of an ordinary, completely unknown, unemployed citizen on its front page. That does not happen in journalism. That is an impossibility in any newspaper or television news. The only way a rape conviction would find its way on the front page would be if the accused were a hugely known, prominent person.

The SN omitted the projection of a likely loser and winner of one of CARICOM’s most intriguing national elections, and gave front-page coverage to a rape conviction of a low-life man. This is the extent of the penetration of evil in this newspaper. Before I speak about the ongoing projection the entire day yesterday so people knew the likely results, a few words on newspapers’ press timing.

I have written for all the major newspapers in Guyana, and I can say with a billion per cent accuracy that no newspaper in this country in the past or at the moment goes to press before 10 PM. I repeat: None of them do that. The pages are normally completed around 10pm to 11pm.

Yesterday, at around 10 AM, Neil Marks of Newsroom asked me to comment on the likely results, given what we both saw with the SOPs. By 10am that morning, the political parties would have known the likely loser and winner. By 4PM yesterday, the projection showed the winner and loser. People in journalism and in social activism knew the results.
At 4pm I was sitting on the balcony of Ignite Television Station and had two conversations at separate times. One was with a huge name in the PPP leadership, and we were discussing the results. The other conversation was with Vice-Chairman of the Alliance For Change, Michael Carrington, who knew how WIN had performed, and the regions that WIN won.

As dusk descended on Guyana yesterday, the entire country knew the election results. That is easy to know with the new methodology for GEGOM posting SOPs. At 8PM, Vice-President Jagdeo told his supporters there was a PPP victory. That speech was a front-page news item in Kaieteur News.   All media houses in every country in the world monitor projections and publish the trends that would shape an election result. The only paper that has not done that is SN.

Why on yesterday’s front page did SN not even carry one small item on the trends the SOPs were showing? The newspaper, overtaken with anti-PPP hate since 2020 and reeling from the handsome victory of the PPP on Monday evening, which it did not believe would happen, chose not to highlight the trends in SOPs.

In a recent column I wrote that the editor-in-chief of SN, Mr. Anand Persaud, and SN itself, have gone mad. Is there a decent human out there that believes that what SN did yesterday is not horrible, sick and malicious? This is not journalism; this is evil politics. But what is sad is that people who buy the print version of SN and subscribe to its Online edition are entitled to the reporting of news as it unfolds. SN abandoned its obligation to its readers, and informed them about a rape conviction.

I honestly believe that SN no longer serves any purpose in Guyana. But it will continue to thrive, because a certain Western embassy here will give it money, and it will live on that money with the dozens of millions it collects monthly from State advertisements.
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.