Dear Editor,
I wish my friend Barrington Braithwaite had found the wisdom of consulting me before he wrote the letter (‘“Culture” should be a separate department…’ SN, May 27). I have spent a great deal of the past five years being singularly consistent in pointing out the severe shortcomings in cultural policy under the previous administration and it would save me a great deal of trouble if I did not have to waste time responding to ill-informed and frankly transparent agendas.
First of all, the Chronicle editorial of 2005 did in fact refer to Carifesta as burlesque. This isn’t an opinion I had been alone in holding at the time, considering that I was in as good company as Derek Walcott, and this is prior to the reformed Carifesta model that came out of the Dr Keith Nurse restructuring plan which was to inform the festival of 2006 and subsequent incarnations. Even the 2006 festival in Trinidad did not escape such criticism with current founder of Bocas Lit Fest, Marina Salandy-Brown writing in Newsday, October 12, 2006: “I know many people worked tirelessly to get it on the road but the criticism that Carifesta IX was a Carifiasco is not unfair. My professional judgment is that, in the end, it was a rag tag of good and bad entertainment, not enough new or exciting.”
Now, I’m not sure what Mr Braithwaite refers to as my “attack on Burnham” but he can perhaps enlighten me if he finds it prudent to respond and clarify, although I’m not sure that President Burnham was beyond criticism. I’d also challenge him to present a single piece of writing that I produced at the Chronicle, editorial or otherwise, that could be seen as remotely partisan in nature. Mr Braithwaite’s insinuation that my engagement there was somehow politically tainted is not only an insult to the professional journalists who still worked there at the time, like Michelle Nurse, Claudette Earle, George Baird and even Sharief Khan himself, but it is particularly ironic considering that he regularly submitted cartoons to the Chronicle as well.
It seems that Dr Paloma Mohammed, as is typical, has decided to hide behind a defender instead of presenting her face to the public, in response to comments I’ve made on social media regarding her complicity in the state of cultural degradation in Guyana. Mr Braithwaite touches upon one sphere of such complicity, her stint at Creative Director of the disastrous Carifesta X (2008), not a mere consultant manager as he implies. To date, despite the sum disaster that was that festival, Dr Mohamed has remained silent on the very real problems that took place leading up to, during the event and after. In fact, from the beginning, Carifesta got off to a poor start creatively and logistically, as chronicled by journalist Neil Marks who was fired from the Guyana Times for daring to point that out. Despite her dual role as both Creative Director of Carifesta and head of the Theatre Guild, Dr Mohamed has personally remained silent on the fact that the Guild remains unpaid for services to very festival she played a lead role in organising. The Theatre Guild continued to receive little or no support from government despite its critical role in keeping theatre alive in Guyana and the question of the insulting subvention has come up in Parliament, even as Dr Mohamed has remained silent. Silence again last year when the very Minister of Culture whom Braithwaite skewers was publicly accused of shortchanging the participants in the National Drama Festival of 2013.
I’ve consistently pointed out the flaws in the Caribbean Press, something in which I’ve been occasionally joined by various persons including Mr Braithwaite himself. Dr Mohamed in contrast has willingly had three books published by the mechanism without uttering a single word of even constructive criticism in having the Press function for its original stated purpose of benefiting emerging writers in Guyana. Mr Braithwaite and I (myself uninvited) attended a ministry organised creative industries workshop over a year ago at which Dr Mohamed presented, and we’ve both raised the issue that a report and follow-up workshop promised to be given weeks after that initiative has never materialised, nor Mohamed.
Pointing out facts is not envy; it is pointing out facts. It is disingenuous at best to seek to thwart legitimate criticisms of cultural gatekeepers, obfuscating legitimate criticisms by throwing around terms such as “defamations”. If my criticisms on social media, the ones I have repeated here, are not factual, Dr Mohamed is free to rebut them herself. I have little concern with what people did 22 years ago before they fell in line and became part of the very machinery they claim to be dysfunctional; my concern is fixing now.
Now, Mr Braithwaite attacks my credentials to adequately deal with cultural policy on the unfortunate presumption that the ‘Arts’ constitute more, much more than writers, and that I have “not ventured out into that myriad world as yet.” It is perhaps understandable considering that he might not have been privy to the extensive work I would have done as consultant to the UWI-Caricom project between 2003 and 2010, inclusive of a report on Carifesta IX (2006), something the Creative Director of the disastrous Carifesta X (2008) might have benefited from had her process for consultation been actually inclusive as opposed to conforming to the PPP’s policy of marginalisation. In 2011, I wrote extensively on culture as consultant to the Alliance For Change, including informing their Action Plan’s cultural policy, just as I contributed to the cultural policy component of the APNU+AFC’s manifesto of 2015. The Prince Claus Fund grant that I received last year was not premised on my work as a writer, or even in defence of writing, but on my very specific ideas on cultural policy and its role in developing Guyana. The paper I will be presenting at the Eco-Tones Conference in Amsterdam in October of this year speaks to integrating creative industries in the three Guianas. Mr Braithwaite berates the PPP but reverts to their standard tactic of an ill-informed and pseudo-condescending ad hominem attack on the credentials of someone they wish to attempt to publicly deconstruct.
Mr Braithwaite’s letter curiously plays up Dr Mohamed’s capacity to function in a policy formulation capacity, something I’ve never questioned, merely her silence and comfort around a now former government that he himself describes as “evasive, contemptuous, delusional and deceptive.” What this essentially boils down to is a weak attempt at providing a job reference for Dr Mohamed premised on a spurious and ill-informed attack on what it is that I am in fact doing. Both can rest easy that I have no intention at present of seeking any long-term engagement with government in any senior capacity. And even as I will never hesitate to call a spade a spade, or censor myself to accommodate ignorance, my approach has always been inclusiveness based on merit.
By the time this response would have been published, an action plan would have been sent off to the Ministry of Education, coming out of a conversation I’ve had with the Minister and based upon my research both prior and subsequent to the Janus Cultural Policy Initiative, detailing a three-pronged approach on cultural policy moving forward − Culture in Development, Cultural Heritage, and Creative Industries. On the list of people I have suggested to deal with the pressing issue of mainstreaming Culture in Development is Dr Paloma Mohamed, more specifically a sub-committee on Education which is where I believe she can most adequately function; my recommendation to head the Committee on Creative Industries is Barrington Braithwaite. The role I’ve assigned myself is in a temporary advisory capacity until such time as the mechanism is firmly established. As it has been since 2005, my concerns for the role of culture in development, while rooted here, extend beyond Guyana, particularly the hypocrisy and petty rivalries that inform what should be honest, open and legitimate engagement on critical public issues.
Yours faithfully,
Ruel Johnson
Janus Cultural Policy Initiative
