Dear Editor
EFFORTS by some to besmirch the reputation of others began from time immemorial and it will continue long into the future.
What makes such efforts despicable is when those efforts are more fictional than factual.
Nowadays this phenomenon is known as ‘alternative facts’ or, if you wish, fake news. A brief lesson in history will suffice. I choose Sir Walter Raleigh for obvious reasons. Sir Walter Raleigh took ‘glad tidings of great joy’ back to the House of Stuart about El Dorado, he supposedly committed ‘treason’ by seeking an alliance with Spain and was said to have ‘ rejoiced at Essex’s death and puffed out tobacco ‘in disdain of him’.
For all these scandals, fake news and trumped up charges,Raleigh was executed by the axeman. Nowadays, execution is by the pen of the journalist who, in the employ of the state, are paid to write contrived narratives pleasing to those who strut the corridors of power.
Guyanese politics is rich and abundant with alternative facts and fake news long before becoming an independent nation. Such genre of ‘news’ or ‘facts’ is used to denigrate and belittle one political adversary or the other. Peddling of fake news and alternative facts does not depend on who is in government or who is in the opposition so long as it becomes weaponised. And so it came to pass, when Desmond Hoyte became Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, at a sitting of the National Assembly he claimed that Minister Rohee mistakenly boarded a plane for the Commonwealth of Dominica instead of boarding a plane for the Dominican Republic.
When the Minister asked MP Hoyte there and then to explain when and where this happened,Hoyte became evasive. Anyone acquainted with travelling by air would know that such an occurrence was well nigh impossible from a logistic and security perspective. In the Guyana Chronicle Editorial of Saturday May 13, 2017,Hoyte’s fake news re-surfaced, but this time it took a 360 degree twist thus: “It could be recalled then Minister of Foreign Affairs,Clement Rohee voting in favour of the The Dominican Republic, though Guyana’s vote was intended for our sister CARICOM state, the Commonwealth of Dominica.”
The Guyana Chronicle may wish to answer for the benefit of its readers the following questions; (1) In which organization did the ‘vote’ take place? ((2)At what forum in that organization was this ‘vote’ taken?( 3) What was the issue that was to be ‘voted’ on?( 4) Who was the Head of Mission accredited to the organization at the time when the ‘vote’ was taken?
The Guyana Chronicle must answer these questions lest its credibility, which is already highly questionable, is further eroded in the eyes of the Guyanese public.
Regards
Clement J. Rohee
Former Minister of Foreign Affairs