Guyana Press Association (GPA) President, Nazima Raghubir, is calling out the government over its organization of a press conference and allegations of intimidation by supporters of the ruling party.
The complaints of intimidation were made by reporters from the Kaieteur News who were covering a press conference by President Irfaan Ali at the Leonora Track and Field Stadium on Friday. However, Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for the media, Kwame McCoy is defending the government’s organization of the press conference and the responses elicited from the President himself and the audience to questions asked by members of the media.
Reporters were called to the press conference, just an hour and half before its commencement at the Leonora Track and Field Stadium at the conclusion of a Government outreach in Region Three. As a result of the short time, only a handful of reporters were present. It was alleged that chairs designated for the press were instead filled with supporters of the PPP/C Government. At the completion of Ali’s speech, it was further alleged that reporters from the private media were either heckled or intimidated from asking questions which were not favourable to the Government. There are also more allegations, this time directed at the President himself that he added to the intimidation by circumventing questions saying that he preemptively knows what those next questions were. This was noted especially when questions was being asked on oil and gas issues.
In her comments regarding the allegations, Raghubir said that the press conference should not have taken place in that environment.
“It boggles my mind that we are back to this type of environment where I feel like if the President wanted to make a statement among his supporters he could have made the statement and invited the media to (cover) the statement. I don’t think that was the place for a press conference. Then again the powers that be would come out and say it’s their right to hold a press conference and what not and we have been saying that they are not holding press conferences”, she said.
The GPA President added that the scenario that played out at Leonora resembled a one-way conversation that does not reflect accountability and transparency. “There is just a push to have this one-way conversation and it is embarrassing because the President started off his campaign in 2020 talking about accountability and transparency and to this date he is yet to have a Cabinet Secretary to host Post Cabinet Press Briefings to be held to that accountability and transparency standard.” The GPA President added this occurred not only under the PPP/C Government but under the previous government and must stop.
In response, Minister McCoy said that the GPA President’s accusations were untrue and a strange allegation for a country where the media is free.
“It would seem that the vehemence with which both the Kaieteur News and the Guyana Press Association have chosen to lament their peeves, is signaling the commencement of a strange new dispensation for free media practice in Guyana.” McCoy added that “the standard global practice of the press being available and on stand-by for continuous coverage at a moment’s notice, at any site where the Head of State of a country is actively engaged, appears to no longer apply to this particular media house and the GPA, thereby rendering a one-and-a-half-hour notice for a Presidential Press Conference at the very site, terribly (insulting) to them.” McCoy suggested that the tent setting was comfortable enough for thousands of Guyanese working-class citizens and the President of the country, but somehow constituted an “affront to the dignity and nobility of the media”.
McCoy’s press statement continued, “And for some troubling reason, the peoples’ freedom to openly express dissatisfaction with some reporters’ persistent disinterest in the issues other than oil and gas that are germane to the lives of Guyanese and their communities, are mute, to the preeminence of the freedoms and special interests of Kaieteur News and the GPA President.”
He further stated that the PPP/C does not encourage such behaviour. “The records of Friday’s press conference at Leonora would reveal that there were no acts of hostility towards any member of the media at the press conference in question, that the PPP/C Administration does not encourage any such hostilities, and the track record of the Irfaan Ali Government stands tested, proven and unrivalled with regards to extending respect, empowering support and the building of an enabling environment for unfettered freedom, access and advancement of the whole media fraternity in Guyana”, he said.
He added: “While the Government of Guyana presses ahead with the important business of empowering citizens and transforming the country, those in the media with misplaced egos and other agendas would do well to stay abreast with the imperatives of the new, nimble and evolving environment that now underpins the national ethos.”
The GPA responding to McCoy’s statement said that it “…finds the minister’s entire response instructive. It is, sadly, a fully opened window displaying how the government disregards the media workers and its concerns”. The GPA added that this cannot be the yardstick any political party in or out government wants to use as an engagement with the press. The Minister with his “media” experience, and now his mandate to build better relations, should do better.
The GPA said that what it found equally disturbing was the fact that President Ali sought to preclude legitimate questions by sections of the privately-owned media to cheers from a hostile audience by claiming that those questions are “no longer of news value.” The GPA said that rather than lecture the media about how to do its job, the President would have been better off if he had provided details of policies and programmes to address the likely impact of an oil spill on Caribbean islands. The GPA urged media workers in the State and privately-owned media to take note that situations like these point to the need for the press to remain free from the clutches of politicians and other interest groups.
