Jesuit priest and social activist, Fr Malcolm Rodrigues is seeking to have a petition presented to the National Assembly to protest the government’s withdrawal of advertisements from Stabroek News.
Rodrigues feels that the small man would have to turn to presenting petitions to parliament to seek redress or bring to the public notice a number of issues which the government is ignoring, including the ads issue.
In a recent interview, Rodrigues told Stabroek News that he was trying to get some lawyers to advise on the matter since he was one of many persons who are at a disadvantage as they are being denied professional information on account of the ads withdrawal.
In November 2006 the government withdrew ads from Stabroek News in what the newspaper maintains is a clear attempt to punish it for its editorial independence and stance on various issues.
Despite several attempts by Stabroek News and representatives of the regional media to have the matter resolved President Bharrat Jagdeo has refused to consider options for an amicable resolution of the issue.
A regional media team which included Harold Hoyte of Barbados and Guyanese journalist Rickey Singh had proposed to the President that a mechanism be devised for allocating ads. The President has ignored this suggestion.
Stabroek News has also argued that the denial of advertising puts the country in breach of the Declaration of Chapultepec on Press Freedom which Jagdeo himself signed and that it tarnishes his government’s credentials on this very issue.
The withdrawal has been condemned regionally and internationally by media organizations, human rights groups, local political parties and a number of prominent individuals but the government refuses to budge.
Arguing that many persons like himself, who could only afford one newspaper, are excluded from important public fora, such as occurred when he did not know that there were consultations on a draft education bill and the way forward for the University of Guyana.
And as an educator, who has taught for most of his life, including 22 years in Guyana, and is currently volunteering at St Stanislaus College, he said that he needs to know what is happening in the education system.
He said he only learnt of the consultations on the education bill by sheer accident because he was at St Stanislaus College when the event was about to take place and he asked what was going on. He said he was told that the forum was advertised in the Guyana Chronicle and some other newspapers, which he does not buy. He said that he could only buy one newspaper and the paper of choice for him is Stabroek News.
Regarding the university consultation, he said that someone telephoned him and told him about it while asking him if he did not see the advertisement.
He responded by saying it was not advertised in the newspapers that he buys but he subsequently read about it in Stabroek News as a hard news item.
“I said this is terrible because it convinces me that I have a right to this information as a citizen and as one engaged in education. I only buy one papers. They are denying me the right to exercise my interest in some things of national interest,” he said adding, “I have joined the ranks of the alienated because I am being marginalized.”
He feels very strongly that government’s withdrawal of the advertisements and not reinstating them despite strong opposition to the decision is a feature of its “dictatorial or autocratic” attitude of not engaging the public’s sentiments.
For this reason and others, which the government has turned a blind eye to, he said that it was time that the ordinary man, who appears to have no voice, bring these matters to public attention through the National Assembly. “That door has to be opened,” he said, adding that, “these small areas of people’s participation in parliament are important.” (Miranda La Rose)
