Press attacks in Guyana represent a trajectory towards despotism - CGID
Posted July 16th. 2008
New York: "Sustained assaults on the independent press in Guyana, by the government, have become alarming and intolerable, and represent a trajectory towards absolute state power and despotism." This is the view of the New York based Caribbean Guyana Institute for Democracy (CGID).
The Institute made this observation in a statement condemning Guyana's President, Bharrat Jagdeo's ban on WRHM TV Capitol News journalist, Gordon Moseley, as well as the entire News program from Presidential assignments and state press conferences.
The Guyana Government Information Agency (GINA) directed Moseley to refrain from entering the premises of the Office of the President and the Presidential Residence at State House in Georgetown. GINA has also requested that Mr. Moseley apologize for what it called "disparaging" remarks in a letter to the press in response to a public attack on him by the President.
Jagdeo had "accused Moseley, Capitol News, the Antigua Broadcasting Service and the Caribbean Media Corporation of reporting unfairly on his meeting with Guyanese during the just concluded Caricom Heads of Government conference in Antigua. An observers who is familiar with Jagdeo's tirade have described his attack on Mosley as "vulgar." Capitol News has dismissed Jagdeo's claim as a "move reminiscent of the Cold War sixties," and defended their coverage of the events in Antigua as "eminently fair, objective and balanced." The News program also blasted the ban and called for its "revocation forthwith, noting that the press be allowed to freely exercise its constitutional mandate.
"It is wholly unfortunate that the Office of the President feels that it must in the spirit of the past regimes over the last fifty years in this country dictate to the press who it likes or dislikes covering an assignment," a Capitol News statement said."
General Manager of Capitol News, Enrico Wolford, has said that "It is unfortunate that the administration seeks to distract attention from more salient matters of national interest and lurch from one contretemps with the media to another." He noted that "the Office of the President should engage in trying to run the country rather than trying to run the media."
CGID Director of Communications, Jevon Suralie, in a statement yesterday said that the government of President Bharrat Jagdeo continues to vilify members of the press in a campaign of vicious attacks on those who report the truth about the government.
"First it was journalist Mark Benschop who was placed in jail for five years. Next TV Talk Show host, Ronald Waddell, was shot to death. The government then withdrew ads from the Stabroek Newspaper and subsequently closed down CNS TV Channel 6. Now the Kaieteur Newspaper and Capitol News are under ferocious attack." He observed that "The Jagdeo administration is hostile to the independent press and has ruthlessly attacked journalists it does not like."
"This pattern of anti-press conduct by President Jagdeo is an attempt to impose gangster communism in Guyana, and stands out in Caricom like a sore. It must be rejected by regional Heads of Government as well as media practitioners and their representative bodies," Suralie stressed.
Suralie said that "the political crisis in Guyana is deepening because institutions like the Caricom Heads of government conference and the Organization of American States appear willing to condone pseudo-despots. He criticized Caricom leaders whom he said "have not fully engaged the Guyana government on its pursuance of an ethnocratic dictatorship."