SUDDENLY, out of nowhere, a group of names have emerged in the Stabroek News. No one before the 2025 election ever heard about these names. They just suddenly appeared out of thin air. Four of these names are Khemraj Harryram, Hemdutt Kumar, Vishu Prashad, and Surajdai Juglall.
Go back to the first half of 2025 and long before 2025, those names were nowhere to be seen. The obvious question is that these signatures are not real. How do we know that? Because once you see virulent letters appearing in the press condemning the PPP/C government and they are all Indian names, then you know you are seeing bogus signatures.
Khemraj Harryram is a privileged Guyanese man. He wrote that a group of UG students funded by New York businessmen did a poll on the likely outcome of the 2025 election. He wrote that the results will be a minority government with the PPP/C falling from 33 to 29. Harryram wrote in his letter that he was the only person in and out of Guyana to have seen the poll.
Here is what I wrote about Harryram in my August 21, 2025 column in this newspaper: “In yesterday’s edition of Kaieteur News, a jumbie poll by jumbie people was reported in the letter section signed by a man named Khemraj Harryram. No one knows who Harryram is. No one ever heard about Harryram before 2025.”
This meant that either the New York businessmen showed Harryram the findings or the UG students did. Either way, it meant that Harryram is not an obscure person but someone with connections. But there is no real person writing letters in the newspaper named Harryram. The Stabroek News knows this.
None of the signatures listed above are real names. We will never know who they are. Firstly, decent Guyanese are not going to demand that the newspaper tell us if they are real people and offer a snippet of their status. Secondly, the newspapers are going to respond and say that they cannot give out details of those who send letters.
Thirdly, the letter writers themselves are going to respond and resort to the usual sickening response that is so banal and comical. It goes like this – why bother with the messenger; it is the message that is important. So why is that traditional comicality sickening? Because the messenger does not explain why the messenger chooses to deliver a message with a bag over his face.
Now the messenger could have a logical reason for putting the bag over his face but the point is, all he needs to do is explain why the bag is necessary. The point is the messenger must explain why he wants to send a message and remain anonymous. Fourthly, there is another reason why Harryram and the other signatures stated above are not going to identify themselves. The banality shows its head again. The readers will be told that out of fear of victimisation, they cannot be identified.
So, the Guyanese people will never know who these cowards are. But where does that leave transparency in the media, the very media that each moment of each minute of each day wants transparency from the government? Why should the press publish letters from people that hide their real names? There is always a way out of this. What the Stabroek News does? it allows the person to hide their identity with the words “name and address supplied.”
What the newspaper has to do is to tell Harryram, Hemdutt Kumar, Vishu Prashad and Surajdai Juglall to continue to send their letters but instead of a fake name just say “name and address supplied.”
But why continue to use fake appellations and, in the process, you deceive people into thinking that you are real.
This is a sickening country. Every day, there is the cry for transparency by people who have profound contempt for the word itself. Stabroek News refuses to identify its board of directors. I called the acting chairman of ANUG, Mr. Jonathan Subrian to ask for the list of the executive of ANUG. He told me there was a press release.
But I didn’t ask about press release. I requested the names of the leadership of a political party. And I am from the media therefore the information should have been given. Not one person who is connected to the executive committee of the Guyana Human Rights Association wants to share information about the GHRA or give an interview.
But they are not afraid to criticise the government for lack of transparency. Maybe these people, all of them, lack something far more important to life than transparency. I think you know what that is.

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.