IN Guyana, a dose of boasting is good for one’s protection from the wolves who have now descended on a little 62-acre farm on the Soesdyke/Linden highway owned by President Ali. So here is a little bit of boasting from a political and journalistic dinosaur who has been around for so long that I have seen it all.

I am the first person in Guyana who, in the 1970s, as a revolutionary, Marxist youth happily ensconced in my working-class ambience, felt uncomfortable with the politics of Rupert Roopnaraine. He simply did not fit the bill of a genuine Caribbean liberator. I saw all the traits in him of an Anglo-Saxonised man who was a quintessential Mulatto/Creole elitist.  Look at the long career of Roopnaraine and tell me if I am wrong.

I was the first person in the 1980s that saw through Raymond Gaskin. He just did not look genuine in his politics. So as early as 1989, as a Stabroek News columnist, I wrote a critical piece assessing his political persona. I was right back then. Gaskin turned out to be far from what he preached. I was the first person that questioned the pronouncements by Vishnu Bisram concerning surveys and polls he said he was doing in Guyana.

I was the first person associated with the AFC that detected that they would be fraudulent patriots as they settled down in power. No one who had been around the AFC, wrote about their faults as they continued into power. I was a Kaieteur News columnist back then and my daily columns were an exposure of the betrayal of Guyana by the AFC.  I never wrote about some of the nasty things said about me when the AFC leaders read my daily items in Kaieteur News.

I could go on to give you dozens of examples where I was right about people over my long years as a social activist. So I come now to the Kiskadee Watch. When the people behind the Kiskadee Watch announced its arrival, I responded with a commentary of Thursday, June 11, 2026, title, “The birth of an anti-government kiskadee” and followed it up with another offering on Friday, June 26, 2026, named “The kiskadee, like the leopard, cannot change its spots.”

Was I wrong about the Kiskadee Watch which was essentially Stabroek News with a new name? Look at last Wednesday’s issue. I am boasting that my prediction was bang on target. So there is a news item with Chris Ram’s photograph, which was taken from his column. So kiskadee published a column by Ram on the President’s farm yet extracted a news item from the column. You may call it overkill.

Since the controversy started about the President’s farm, the kiskadee has been frenzied in its approach to condemning the president. The bird wants a commission of enquiry.  There have been prominent Guyanese that have written in support of the President’s farm but the kiskadee did not have the journalistic decency to invite them for a comment. Those persons are Leonard Craig and Jermain Figueira.

All the columnists with the former Stabroek News are with the bird. The list includes Ralph Ramkarran, Anand Goolsarran, Chris Ram, Bertrand Ramcharran.  Since the birth of the bird, there has been not one news item that puts the government’s policies in a positive way. There has been no attempt to seek balance by asking an academic to do a column that looks upon the government favourably.

As the bird loves to sing about accountability, a dose of accountability from the bird is a moral requirement. Stabroek News is dead and gone and the newspaper never felt it had an obligation to publish its ownership. We only knew that the two DeCaries siblings had the majority share. We never knew who were on its board of directors except attorney, Timothy Jonas. When I asked Jonas who were the other members, he told me he couldn’t remember.

Will the kiskadee tell us who bought the building on Robbs Street and the building that housed the printery on George Street? There will be no reporting on that by the kiskadee. Will the kiskadee tell us who supplied the startup finance?  We will never get that information. For some contorted psychological reason, the financiers of the bird do not see they have an obligation as part of the Fourth Estate to tell the nation that.

So the bird wants a commission of inquiry into the President’s farm. Now, please note, the watcher wants a public commission. But the watcher is yet to publish evidence of wrong-doing so we can see what wrong the president committed. One day the kiskadee is going to fly into a GPL live wire.

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.