Dear Editor,
Stabroek News must immediately admit it made a mistake regarding the CADRES poll and it must apologise to the Guyanese people forthwith. Anything else would be tantamount to uppity-cosmopolitan arrogance of the Lacytown variety.
Let me be specific here. Calls have been made for the newspaper to reveal who commissioned the CADRES poll and who paid for it. Stabroek News had denied knowing the commissioner and/or the funder, all the while invoking the ‘line’ that the polling company does not usually reveal the identity of its clients.
But let us face it; something is terribly wrong at Stabroek News with the CADRES poll. It is so bad that I will now call it the ‘Stabroek News poll scandal.’
We should get to some evidence, because evidence is something that SN really insists on.
Stabroek News must explain the absolute contradictions on pages six and ten regarding the identity of the CADRES client. On page six, in an editor’s note, SN says the following: “…[W]e will say again that Mr Wickham [of CADRES] told us it was a client’s decision whether they identified themselves or not as having commissioned a poll, and in this instance they did not wish their identity to be known.” The same editor’s note also states that “Since CADRES has declined to disclose who commissioned the poll, there is no point in pursuing the matter [of funding]…”
So what we have here is that on page six of the Tuesday edition of the paper, SN is holding on to its ‘line’ of not knowing the identity of the commissioner (and funder) of the poll. But on page ten of the same Tuesday edition, there is an article under the title,‘Floyd Haynes of Newton Group commissioned CADRES poll.’
The article states the following: “Floyd Haynes, of the Washington-based Newton Group, has been identified as the person who commissioned the recent… (CADRES) poll.”
Further, “Stabroek News has learnt that Haynes, who is married to former AFC MP Chantelle Smith, has also held discussion with several political parties here.”
Mind boggling; absolutely mind boggling.
Stabroek News must immediately clarify which of these two ‘stories’ readers must believe. I urge them to do so via a press release, because the stories are conflicting. Apart from the obvious embarrassment to Stabroek News, the nation must be relieved of conflicting information on a matter of national importance.
Incidentally, my office telephoned the AFC’s headquarters to find out about the status of Chantelle Smith in the party. A staffer by the name of Kristin (last name not given) said no one was there to answer the question. That call was placed at about 11.15 am on June 8, 2010.
The nation awaits the clarification from Stabroek News and from the AFC; further to the relationship among CADRES, the AFC, and Stabroek News.
Yours faithfully,
Randy Persaud
Editor’s note
The letters’ page carrying the editor’s note represented the state of our knowledge on who commissioned the poll at that point in time, and had been completed and processed hours before the information reflected in the report on page 10 became available. The editor’s note had indicated that after speaking to Mr Peter Wickham of CADRES, we had been told that the polling organization would not be disclosing the name of the client.
While CADRES had declined to reveal the identity of who commissioned the poll, we had nevertheless been making efforts to find out the information from other sources, and as said above, late on Monday, long after the letter columns had gone through, we were able to establish the person’s identity. That this represented an updated state of our knowledge is clear from the fact that we repeated what had been said in the editor’s note, namely that Mr Wickham had declined to reveal the name of his client.
There is no connection between Stabroek News and CADRES, or Stabroek News and the AFC.
