Dear Editor,
In your Sunday news item about the widening of the withdrawal of state advertisements from your paper, there was no date when the other state agencies began to withhold their advertisements from the Stabroek News. My letter requests an editorial note for that time frame. I would like to know if the extension occurred after the Lusignan Holocaust and the Bartica Massacre. If that is so, then Guyana is heading for a failed state under Mr Jagdeo. After the rise of nihilistic violence last month (23 deaths in three weeks), Mr Jagdeo had agreed to meet stakeholders for a discussion of good governance. If the inclusion of additional state institutions boycotting the Stabroek News’s advertising department occurred after the gunmen struck, then it is clear to me that the Office of the President is not interested in that pathway.
Your answer to my question is personally important to me. I voted for the AFC therefore it has an obligation to me. If the new dimension of the advertisement began after the death of those twenty three persons then I am calling on the AFC to withdraw from Parliament and to pursue extra-parliamentary struggle.
Guyanese opposition forces have to put a brake on persistent authoritarianism. Sadistic gunmen are at the door. They have scared this country as never seen before even when we were under British rule. People were viciously attacked in the sixties – the mini-genocide in McKenzie, the slaughter on the Sun Chapman, the fiery murder of the Abraham family. But it is questionable that in the sixties, armed attackers would have shot children sleeping in their beds .
Guyana is in a vortex where disintegration can easily occur with unbelievable rapidity. We have come together as a nation since Bartica and Lusignan. Now we are hearing about the increase of the boycott of the Stabroek News. I am asking for further clarification in your editorial note. My understanding from someone high up in the Stabroek News directorate is that the PPP disagreed with the withdrawal and asks for reinstitution. As a response, Mr Jagdeo is alleged to have said that such a reversal would hurt his national standing. Is that true? Are you aware of such circumstances within the PPP/C? Shouldn’t Stabroek News ask the Speaker of the House for his attitude to the new development? He was quoted in your paper as telling a Guyanese audience in Miami that Guyana has to seek compromise with its constituent parts.
And what about Mrs. Jagan? If she is against the ban as she publicly stated that she is, then can your paper solicit a comment from her. Any commentator would interpret the intensification of the boycott as an insult to Mrs Jagan. I await your editorial note.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
Editor’s note
Our advertising department reports that this year the Auditor General has had 8 ads in the Guyana Chronicle (GC) from January 27 to March 8 and 9 in the Kaieteur News (KN) from February 13 to March 9; ads for the Citizens Security Programme from the Ministry of Home Affairs funded by the IDB appeared in GC and KN on February 14, 16 and 17; ads from the Conservancy Project from the Ministry of Agriculture funded by the World Bank appeared seven times in GC and KN from February 14 to March 12; ads from the Guyana Defence Force appeared in GC from March 2 to March 11 (8), and in the KN from January 11 to February 17 (10); from the Guyana Police Force in GC from January 25 to February 26 (12) and KN from February 23 to February 29 (5).
All of these ads were placed by GINA and none appeared in the Stabroek News.
