I BELIEVE there are many areas of government’s directions that one can criticise. It lacks commonsense to say there is a government on Planet Earth whose performance is perfect and there are no dimensions which can be subjected to criticism.

What we have in this country is a mindset so insanely hostile to the government that when you read and listen to them, you would think that except for government’s sins, Guyana is a perfect country. Guyana’s physiology is in fact riddled with degeneracy that cries out for exposure.

I came from an era in this country where people would hold a placard night and day, protesting wrong things organisations did that are unrelated to governmental behaviour. In the current era, malignant, odious things are on our doorsteps and there are no comments, even a one-line paragraph, or a one-minute voice note.

I did not do a column on World Press Freedom Day because there were more relevant and exigent topics to pursue. Even this piece here I almost didn’t do because I have some more comments on the Adriana Younge tragedy. But as a media operative of 36 years, I thought I should take a look at Guyana on World Press Freedom Day.

I will digress in a few paragraphs before I look at the state of journalism in Guyana. I ran into one of Guyana’s known names and as we chatted, he brought up the case of the government appealing a case that an NIS pensioner had won. He thinks the state should not appeal the matter.

In our conversation, he never raised one word about the myriad violations, social aberrations and nasty violations that I highlight in these columns 30 times each month, or if you want to put it another, every day.

What is taking place in this country is tremendous degeneracy that never sees a word of comment, much less criticism by people who are so obsessed with the government and the PPP that you want to think each night before they sleep they look under their beds to see if any PPP leader is there.

What I would like is that when people stop me that they do not bring up government action only, but also the nasty behaviour that exists elsewhere in this country.

World Press Freedom Day has found Guyana’s journalism in a deplorable state. The current president of the Guyana Press Association (GPA), Nazima Raghubir, has exceeded her term limits.

Here is what Ms Raghubir did. She was in her second term when COVID struck. During COVID, Ms Raghubir was the president and her second term should have ended in January 2022. Ms Raghubir said no. There was COVID, so we could not have election from 2022 onwards.

So in 2023, the GPA held elections and Ms Raghubir was installed as president. Ms Raghubir said that you couldn’t count the years 2020 to 2022 when there were no elections because there was COVID.
So Ms. Raghubir is now in her fifth year as president which is constitutionally not possible. The 2023 election was riddled with discrepancies in which the voters’ list was available only to the incumbent. The 2023 election of the GPA was blatantly corrugated. What was there to celebrate on World Press Freedom Day in Guyana in 2025?

Mr Mike Mc Cormack of the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) issued a press release on May 14, 2025 on the Adriana Younge tragedy in which the GHRA called on the diplomatic community to look into the issue of public trust in national institutions including the state-owned media.

Mr. Mc Cormack chose to identify the state-owned media only. But do the Guyanese people have trust in the GHRA itself and the general media landscape in this country? Enter Timothy Jonas. Mr Jonas is a respected attorney and one of the founders of the political party – ANUG.

There was the widespread reporting of a confrontation between Mr. Jonas and journalist, Gordon Moseley on the balcony on the High Court during the election disaster of 2020.

Mr Jonas told Mr Moseley he is not giving him any comment because he believes Mr Moseley would not report him accurately. Is there public trust in the media in Guyana? Why did Mr. Mc Cormack single out the state-media only when the independence of the journalistic mind died years ago in this country?

Mc Cormack said not one word about the rigged 2023 election of the GPA. Transparency International- Guyana Chapter said not one word about the fraudulent 2023 GPA elections. In this country, insane anti-government actors see absolutely nothing wrong with sections of the Guyanese society whose cancerous tentacles endanger the biology of Guyana.

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.