Part 4: Press and Associations in Guyana

By Earl Bousquet
ALLAN Fenty was a true Caribbean and Guyanese bard-to-the-bone, who (always jocularly) never let me forget I’m from “a small-island Caribbean rock where people only speak Palawalla!”
We met soon after I started working as the editor of ‘The Mirror’ newspaper in 1993, and our friendship bonded in a mutually respectful way that allowed us to always ‘agree to disagree’ on the few occasions we couldn’t accord.

We met mainly on weekends in Georgetown — at the domino table on Fridays at the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) or the Guyana Chronicle’s recreation centre at Lama Avenue, other times elsewhere with Bert Wilkinson or Sharief Khan, at a State House reception organised by then Information Minister, Moses Nagamootoo, or to review the Saturday newspapers at one of our favourite watering holes on Sheriff or Robb Streets.

Allan was also my best source on how to cook cross-cuisine Guyana food – and where to watch for who and what for a better understanding of some of the more hidden factors of life in what he’d often refer to as “two-tone Guyana”.

After getting souse on Saturday afternoons, we took pleasure in laughing whenever someone innocently mistook our increasing volume at our table-for-two for confrontation when it was only an increase in the decibel levels of (our) disagreement.

I would refer to Alan as ‘The Pluralist’ – for the simple fact that the word “me” and the adjective ‘I’ didn’t seem to exist when it came to describing himself, as he always said ‘Fenty’-this or ‘Fenty’-that, but never ‘I’ — and he’d simply reply asking me: ‘How many Fenty you see here, buddy?’)

Last time we met, we discussed which country better cooked (what we call) ‘Cou-Cou’ — an original African dish – and he went into one of his intellectually saucy episodes about “the vast ocean of a human difference between cooking cou-cou and making cou-cou…”

Once, when President Cheddi Jagan addressed an August 1st rally in the National Park wearing an African Dashiki shirt, Allan insisted, despite all my ‘cross-my-heart’ denials, that “Nobody c’yah tell Fenty you dis Pallawalla had nutting to do wid dat…”

And when I took a long sip and then ‘I’ll take the Fifth on dat…’ he replied: “Fenty accepts your admission of guilt…”
Allan was also a prolific writer and broadcaster who often reminded me, “I’ve seen lots of geese and ganders cooked in my life, some roasted, never to be eaten again…”
He could bat and bowl as well as he could poke bouncers and score boundaries, with or without fuss, no matter where and on what pitch.

I remember asking him why there were “two press associations” in Guyana and he replied: “There are two types of associations: those you associate with and those you ALSO associate with…”
His explanation was that “Those who look alike naturally associate together, so in that sense too, we have both sets of associations…”
Of course, the guardsman in his brain never allowed Fenty’s tongue to stray too far from his mouth’s gate, so he ended thus: “So, our associations associate and they press their respective associations in specific respective directions come-what-may, because that’s what associations are for: to press for the association…”

Typical Fenty… He would not get drawn into discussing why there was a Union of Guyanese Journalists (UGJ) and a Guyana Press Association (GPA) that never saw eye-to-eye or the same things the same ways.

I asked him once how he felt when our friend Moses Nagamootoo was charged and prosecuted for writing a story in The Mirror about ‘The Presidential Cow’ – about how an electric security fence along a presidential property had killed a poor farmer’s grazing cow, after coming into contact with the fence.
On Such occasions, Allan would answer a question I didn’t ask, like (in this case), “Oh, I didn’t realise you didn’t know he was never jailed…”

Back then, the leadership of the UGJ pointed all fingers at the GPA, sometimes accusing it of being ‘an association of anti-PPP affiliates’, or ‘a communion of anti-Jagan associates’ and very rarely would the two meet — except at regional or international engagements.

Fast-forward three decades, the UGJ is no longer seen or heard, while the GPA has become a skeleton of itself, now unrecognisable by many in the Guyana press in the three years since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in 2020.

It’s emerging now that what used to be a classic example of Fenty’s definition of ‘an association of associates’ to what seems and sounds like a virtual, if not verifiable, private and copyrighted property that can’t be called to the table or held to heel as with traditional associations of its type.

So, (I’m told) unlike registered national organisations that must observe certain legal protocols ahead of annual or general meetings, today’s GPA could not have been forced to publish a voters or membership list ahead of last weekend’s (s)elections.

Why? Because it’s not and no-longer what it used to be.

Here again, like it did regarding the Reporters Without Borders Guyana report that almost sounded like about another country, the Chronicle went head-over-heels (even though not on bended knees) to advise the GPA’s leader or leadership to do the right thing(s) and allow for an open, free and fair elections process that’s not just also free from fear, but also free to be attended by and voted at, by all – but to no (or not enough) avail…

Given his present location, I wouldn’t give anything to ask Fenty directly today how he feels about the state of play with the GPA, but my fertile imagination can well see him taking the usual long sip to drown the dreariness and replying:
“Well, my Pallawalla friend, when you lived here it was a two-tone Guyana. But today, Fenty can see like we have started tuning the national tone to press for one national Guyana association…”