Dear Editor,
Few developments catches me off guard in this country, but the coalition did so, when it made overtures to the U.S. Ambassador to get its messages across. I marvel that the American Ambassador, Sarah Ann Lynch, kept a straight face. It must have been trying, given that peculiar appeal from coalition leadership for ventilation of the group’s concerns, which gained scant reception in Guyana’s media. In this, the coalition has gone from unbelievably bad to unimaginably worse.
I start with myself, a nobody, an outsider, and two independent and one religious paper media channels that are open to me, plus one online outlet, and a radio station. All are accessed frequently, a rank nonentity, to offer humble public service to fellow Guyanese. Therefore, it boggles the mind that the coalition is telling the American Ambassador – and by extension, all Guyana – that the likes of possibly Stabroek News (SN), Kaieteur News (KN), and Demerara Waves (DW) have drawn an Iron Curtain down on its messages, apprehensions, visions. For any independent media presence (I believe that the three are) to be so exemplary in the foolhardy, dismissive of a good 40% of this country’s population bewilders.
The media may be biased (somewhat), but it cannot be this backward, or contributory to the prejudices that rend this land to shreds. If the coalition leadership is serious, then I urge the following steps. First, tell its people, like the PPP practises, to not buy the papers that block their party’s messages. Second, tell their business supporters to stop advertising in those spaces. Third, take things a step higher, manifest public disagreement with such behaviours by picketing their premises. Fourth, call them out at every opportunity, call for a meeting with the editors and frankly air grievances. At least, there should be some give, some movement, at SN, KN and DW that favors coalition’s positions.
Regarding broadcasting the coalition’s message in those places in America that count (Congress, media, thinktanks, and such), the ambassador may be a conduit, but no more. But the coalition’s own sizable mass of supporters in the American diaspora has to do tireless work over there. These are the things that I quietly recommend that the coalition start doing. Not roll over in frustration and impatience after eight months, and lay down and die. It must be about hard, sweaty, and dirty work, which I gather that the coalition recoils from doing. When it was in power, it had little time even for its own people to say: thanks. Or what are your concerns? Or how can we help? Now it escalates to the American plenipotentiary. We have to solve our own problems, and stop groveling before outsiders and those who use us for their own benefit. To the coalition leadership, I say this: do some work. Get moving.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
