LAST week, I was in the picket line, outside CARICOM, for the denunciation of genocide being committed in Gaza by the Nazi regime in Israel. I was deeply engrossed in a conversation with long-standing Caribbean Pan-Africanist, Guyanese, Gerald Perreira when a man came up and engaged me.
He said that he was an admirer and liked my politics when I was a Kaieteur News columnist. He said he has stopped reading me since I became a Chronicle columnist. This is the identical sentiment by a diaspora Guyanese named Griffith who is from my hometown of Wortmanville in South Georgetown.
Mr. Griffith is of my age group and over the past ten years has been a frequent contributor to the comments section of the online letter page of Stabroek News where he has always written about his admiration for me. Since I became a Chronicle columnist, Mr. Griffith says he has stopped reading me.
I now express my thanks to Mr. Griffith for embracing my activism over the years, but we will now part company because, like the man in the Palestine picket line, Mr. Griffith is guilty of gross ignorance and narrow-mindedness. Both gentlemen stopped reading me because of a simple reason—I am not criticising the PPP anymore.
So, I am assuming that these two persons admired me for opposing the PPP government and that was all my value to them. And since they still don’t like the PPP, I am not their guy anymore because I am not criticising the government and I am not part of the broad swath of opposition endorsers.
Can we argue that these two men are ignorant? I told the gentleman in the picket line he is ignorant for adopting that perspective. I have never corresponded with Mr. Griffith but through this article here, which he will not read (since he doesn’t read the Chronicle) I  hope someone will inform him about what I am telling him that he has become a silly fellow whose mind is too narrow.
Now let us assume that they don’t want to read my positive analysis of the PPP government but what about the other value I have – my research into the wrongdoings of the society? Surely, these two gentlemen cannot be stupid to think that in Guyana there is only one corner where you can find wrongdoings—the government.
One of the themes running through my social activism of 57 years and my 36 years in the media is that the majority of people that have criticised power from the Burnham era right up to October 2025 are people who have no moral redemption and thus have no ethical standard to judge unbecoming behaviour by those in government.
Let me repeat for the umpteenth time—if I were to write my autobiography, I would literally get hundreds of libel writs in one day for saying truthful things, factual things about people who would look bad because of my exposures. So where do the man in the picket line and Mr. Griffith get their news and interpretations about terrible people in civil society, the business world, the opposition, the police, etc.?
Do these two men expect to get their news about the despicable hypocrisy of certain civil society organisations from the Stabroek News (SN)? They wouldn’t because the SN sponsors and keeps these civil society groups alive.  Do these two men expect Kaieteur News (KN) to expose the vices of the opposition parties?  KN wouldn’t  because it is insanely hostile to the government.
Do these two gentlemen expect civil society to expose gutter journalism and unprofessional, naked, political bias from SN and KN? They shouldn’t because these civil society entities are given expanding and expansive space in SN and KN. Do these two gentlemen expect the entire grouping of opposition parties to denounce SN, KN and civil society for egregious behaviour? Why would civil society and opposition parties do that when they are one large incestuous school?
I ask again: where do these two men get their information about opposition parties that have demonstrated time and time again that they are not an alternative to the PPP government? Alright, if these two men do not want to read my Chronicle columns, are they saying that they do not want to hear or read anything bad about the opposition?  If the answer is yes, then they have absolutely no moral ground for criticising me.
Finally, are these two men saying intellectual columnists with the Chronicle cannot write valid things that give people knowledge? I can think of Dr. Randy Persaud, Joel Bhagwandin, and Lenoard Craig. These men have composed excellent work on politics, economics, and finance that all Guyanese need to read.

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.