If there is no development, then there can be no reward
SEPTEMBER 1, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Dear Editor,

It was with no small amount of amusement that I saw, at last, the shortlist for the Guyana Prize for Literature 2011 – I formally repeat my call for the resignation of the Management Committee, not only from the Committee itself but from the publicly-funded posts they occupy. I have been repeatedly asked, often with some light derision, why is it that I continue to harp on and on about a Prize that no one knows or cares about? The Guyana Prize was launched by then President Desmond Hoyte in 1987 with two specific purposes: rewarding Guyanese writing at home and abroad; and fostering the development of local writing.

By failing to do the latter, it has jeopardized and skewed the actualization of the former. If there is no development, then there can be no reward. That is why, and this is something the Management Committee has released without shame or apology, the Best First Book categories – not for the first time in the history of the Prize – remain empty due to the lack of quality of work submitted. Yet the band plays on, apparently ignorant of what has been a clear trend with regard to literary development initiatives in Guyana. For example, when Derek Walcott complained about the need for direct investment in the Arts while visiting Guyana during CARIFESTA in 2008, it was immediately announced by the President that US $100,000 would be given towards the establishment of a Caribbean publishing house.

A year later, the result was not a mechanism to publish contemporary Guyanese/Caribbean literary work, but the disingenuously but also ingeniously conceived “Guyana Classics” series – the reprinting of books originally published decades ago with the ostensibly noble intent of preserving our literary heritage. That the independent press did not question why it was that the much-lauded Caribbean Press initiative could not have published both classic as well as contemporary literature, in keeping the spirit of Walcott’s exhortation, was personally disappointing to me, particularly since Stabroek News had carried an article in which I had warned not only about the sustainability of the initiative but the danger of political control. Or why, as it has subsequently developed, that the Press has only committed to publishing contemporary writers until 2012, the year after the upcoming general elections.

In case my point isn’t coming through clearly enough, the present administration does not believe it beneficial to provide either the means of development for literary expression, nor the vehicles for literary expression – indeed it is outright hostile, if covertly so, to any initiative in this area. If there are workshops, they will be not be publicized, and limited to a few acceptable to the regime, as has happened in the past month and a half; when there are contingents for events like CARIFESTA or the recently concluded Inter-Guiana Cultural Festival, the literary contingents will continue to consist of the mediocre and the incompetent being paraded as the best the country has to offer; publishing houses will be launched but no contemporary writing, particularly post-1992, will ever make it to press; supposedly grand literary ventures will be launched, the substance of which will continue to be the mediocrity that the administration is most comfortable with.

And, as the list of national awardees clearly indicates, those who enable this absurd intellectual fraud will be rewarded and given the legitimization that would expressly be denied them in any fair or sane socio-political milieu, as opposed to this large-scale Dunning-Kruger hypothesis test lab we appear to inhabit. One particular saying that I hold as a perpetual caution in with regard to such affairs is that warning given Aeneas, attributed by Virgil to the Sybil of Cumae, that “The descent into Avernus is easy; day and night the gates of Hell stand open – But to make your way back up into the upper air, therein lies the toil, therein lies the hardship.”

If it is that literature – the ultimate refinement of our very words, the primary means through which we communicate – can be corrupted, and manipulated, and effectively marginalised without comment, and with the quisling facilitation of academia, then all else will follow. And a reversal of the situation will not be easy – today the perversion of the Guyana Prize, the next day the removal of ads from Stabroek News, the next day the cancellation of Merundoi, today the imprisonment of a young man showing his middle finger in the general direction of the Presidential motorcade; what can we expect tomorrow?

Of course, the blame cannot simply be attributed to the administration alone – this state of things with regard to literature has come about not only by crimes of commission but those of omission as well. When President Hoyte launched the Guyana Prize for Literature, it was at a time of relative economic turmoil in Guyana. His justification was that even in direst of straits, we should look to the cultural as well as the economic for sustenance – he quoted the Persian poet Saadi, who exhorted that a hungry man who has two loaves of bread should sell one and with the money “buy hyacinths to feed the soul.” That Hoyte’s party remains silent – with that blissfulness that is the particular pleasure of the ignorant and the unenlightened – the most concrete aspect of his legacy has been corrupted, and twisted to engender the very thing it was founded to combat: it is a cruel and poignant irony.

Ruel Johnson

Source

quote:

.. our freedom of literary expression is under attack, ..


Ruel Johnson

A third of the funding for the Guyana Prize Caribbean Award could have gone to funding writing workshops for emerging writers

By STABROEK STAFF | LETTERS | TUESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2011

Unless shown otherwise, freedom of literary expression exist in Guyana.

Awarding literary recognitions, as in all countries, would always receive differing views.

Who were the members of the literary delegation sent to the Inter-Guiana Cultural Festival?
By STABROEK STAFF | LETTERS | THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

Dear Editor,

Over a year ago, I had levelled what I believed to be a serious charge of nepotism and discrimination against the Ministry of Culture in its selection of literary contingents for Carifestas 8 and 9, held in Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago, respectively. I claimed that artistic qualification was superseded by political bias in the selection of said contingents and twice challenged the ministry to prove me wrong by releasing the names of the members of the contingents and the criteria under which they were selected. As expected, the only response I received was silence.

I saw last week, via the Guyana Chronicle, that the Government of Guyana took a forty-member delegation to the first Inter-Guiana Cultural Festival, a delegation which included a literary component. While I understand that it is the policy of the government not to respond to interrogations of its integrity and fairness, I nevertheless would like to – for the record – make a query. Who were the members of the literary delegation, what were their qualifications, what were the criteria used for selection, and was the good Minister of Culture satisfied that the literary contingent offered the best Guyana had to offer?

Let me be, no pun intended, frank. I’m going to say unequivocally that the Minister of Culture remains woefully out of his depth both in regard to cultural policy as well as the enactment of cultural initiatives. And while the discrimination of conscience in the selection of literary contingents did not begin under him, it has been perpetuated under his tenure. Further, his ministry’s perpetuation of this should not only be taken as reflective of the government in which he is a high-ranking official, but also of the political party – the People’s Progressive Party – which not only does he represent, but in which he is a ranking member of the highest decision-making body, the Central Committee.

Founder of the PPP, Cheddi Jagan would not have approved of this, and in fact would downright be ashamed of it. One of the first things Jagan did when he was first elected to power in the pre-Independence era was to institute the Cheddi Jagan Gold Medal for Literature. When he was again elected to power in 1992, he could have easily removed or weakened the Guyana Prize for Literature – initiated by President Desmond Hoyte – on the pretext, or justification, that it was a luxury in times of economic hardship; not only did he not do any of that, he endorsed it. In his speech at the 1992 Guyana Prize Awards ceremony – a month after he was sworn into office – Dr Jagan stated emphatically: ‘The Guyanese writer has a major role to play in the rebuilding of our society – people engaged in the arts must see themselves as part of the development process.”

It is clear that Cheddi Jagan would have seen the covert and insidious marginalization of any writer as anathema to the spirit of what he fought for, if not an outright resurgence of that which he fought against. The problem with the sort of mediocrity that permeates the highest levels of government is that its accompanying myopia dictates the policy of the powers that be, often to ends inimical to the state they are given temporary responsibility for. With regard to literature and free expression, what seems to be at work here is this moronic and tepid bastard of Cold War/Iron Curtain literary suppression, attempting to clumsily operate in the age of the Internet and WikiLeaks.

I really can only conceive of this approach in terms of the absurdism present in the work of Douglas Adams. In particular, in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy there is the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal – a furious and indestructible creature, but one so densely stupid that if you were to cover your eyes from it, it assumes that since you can’t see it, it can’t see you and thus goes away. I get the sense that this is essentially the government’s view of the creator of free literature in Guyana; here is this cartoonishly furious monster snarling at us, and maybe if we close our eyes long enough to him, he won’t see us and maybe starve to death or just leave altogether so that we can continue our absurd and self-righteous system of doing things in peace.

I’m still here, and I’m asking for the Ministry to publicise the literary contingents for Carifestas 2003 and 2006, and the Inter-Guianas Cultural Festival; the literary credentials of the members of the contingents; and the Minister’s assurance that he was and remains satisfied that those contingents represented the best that Guyana had to offer. Otherwise, we can reasonably take his continued silence to imply not only discrimination of conscience governing literary expression in Guyana, but also a severe tarnishing of the legacy of the great Cheddi Jagan, perpetrated by implication by that party itself.

Yours faithfully,
Ruel Johnson

Stabroek News

Kaieteur News

Ruel Johnson is an award winning Guyanese author.

Johnson won the 2002 Guyana Prize for Literature for best first fiction manuscript for a collection of short stories entitled Ariadne and Other Stories, which he self-published the following year with assistance from COURTS and GuyEnterprise. Johnson, then 22, was the youngest person ever to win the prize.

A former President's College (Golden Grove, Demerara/Mahaica, Guyana, South America) student who hails from Tucville Terrace, Greater Georgetown. He is the eldest of 5 and has one child, Aidan.

Source

Donald Ramotar's Presidential Appreciation Ceremony Speech
by Ruel Johnson on Friday, 09 September 2011 at 11:50

The Future of Progress (Speech)
September 16th, 2011
By Donald Ramotar

My fellow Guyanese. Thank you all for coming out here tonight. Thank you. When a man is asked to make a speech, the first thing he has to decide is what to say: I am the first to admit that I am no great orator. I will start by saying this:

Let a lesser progress continue...

"I am a Ford, not a Lincoln..."

Those words, ladies and gentlemen, those were wise words spoken by a wise man, a wise and humble man. That wise and humble man was none other than US President, Gerald Ford.

Gerald Ford is the sort of leader I can personally identify with, a man who knew his place in history, in politics, and had absolutely no illusions about what his tenure meant - a necessary mediocrity. That is why today, I stand before you to say proudly - I am a Ramotar, not a Jagdeo.

You know this, I know this, and my party knew this when they fast-tracked the brilliant young man - like me, an economist, only far better - past all of us senior members, straight into the Presidency.I think it goes simply to show that the Party which I have personally steered over the past almost fifteen years will not foist mediocrity on the people of Guyana, at least not until the best we have to offer has governed to a constitutionally-delimited maximum of terms, one which we should note that he personally signed into effect with a grace uncommon in regional, and I would dare say even stellar politics.

There are people who claim that I don't have the brains to govern: that my degree is a sham. They say that I have no experience to run the country, that my main encounter with administration is limited to a desk and office in Freedom House. In response to my detractors, let me emphatically say that, while that may be true, I had a lot of experience with people smarter than I am.

They say I am ordinary. And what, may I ask rhetorically, is wrong with ordinary? It's the quality of the ordinary, the straight, the square, that accounts for the great stability and success of our nation. It's a quality to be proud of. But it's a quality that many people seem to have neglected, with their military training and publishing, or their fancy lawyering.

Moreover, I am an economist and I understand from an economical standpoint what it takes to move Guyana forward. When the Honourable Minister of Agriculture, Robert Persaud said that Guyana didn't have the capacity to manage Skeldon Sugar Estate, I stated firmly and without equivocation, “I am not sure if his assessment is totally correct about our capacity to manage Skeldon. I think it is settling down. I have no doubts that with all the problem, Skeldon will eventually prove its worth."

I said this even though it is Minister Persaud who is running my PR campaign for this election: that is the sort of strength of conviction, of assurance that I will bring to the Presidency of this country.

Bharat Jagdeo is a great man. An incomparable man, the founder of modern Guyana. Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo’s contributions to Guyana’s development and that of the region are unmatched. I go into these elections knowing not just that I have a great legacy to live up, but that I cannot live up to it. That said, I think that I have the intellect, natural talent and charisma to communicate effectively here & abroad and bring people together - maybe.

I know they say that the President is not doing enough to comment on the Wikileaks cables which concern him and his cabinet. I cannot imagine any other country in the world where the opposition would seek, and the chief executive would allow, the dissemination of his most private and personal conversations with his staff, which, to be honest, do not exactly confer sainthood on anyone concerned.

Let me warn you now, about the threat our President faces - with the Wikileaks, and the libel lawsuit against Freddie Kissoon, and young men showing him their middle fingers, even in his supposed final days in office. A coalition of groups is waging a massive propaganda campaign against the president of Guyana - an all-out attack. Their aim is total victory for themselves and total defeat for him.

History and experience tell us that moral progress comes not in comfortable and complacent times, but out of trial and confusion. And that is why I though may seem, in the midst of these trials, confused right now - confused about the management of Guysuco, confused about how to handle Wikileaks, confused about the rationale for throwing a big farewell party in the middle of what is supposed to be my campaign, confused about whether I used "rationale" in the correct context just now - I am confident that we will progress from all this.

Again, my fellow Guyanese - I may not be as humanitarian, as visionary, or as astute as our beloved President. I may not have such groundbreaking initiatives such as the One Laptop Per Family, or the Low Carbon Development Strategy, or anything else with L in the abbreviation - but I don't have to. Even if I were one hundredth of the great man that Bharat Jagdeo is, I would be better than any president in Guyana's history except for Cheddi Jagan, who was roughly 25 percent as great as Dr. Jagdeo: I am 8 percent as great, although I admit I had to live to this advanced age to get there. I know these numbers by the way because Vishnu Bisram told me so.

That I also have the endorsement of the President is even better affirmation. The pat on the back, the arm around the shoulder, the praise for what was done right and the sympathetic nod for what wasn't are crucial to my self esteem, and this is the sort of the treatment I receive constantly.

I know other men would not want to campaign in the shadow of such a great leader as the President, tagging along like a puppy, or even that bit of toilet paper that stubbornly sticks on to a puppy's foot if it gets into the toilet. But I have the courage to accept and endorse, without any sense of shame, the constant inflation of Dr. Jagdeo's image, his awesomeness, even to the detriment of my own during the campaign. The greatness of Bharat Jagdeo is the central truth of his administration and that truth is the glue that holds government together.

Even though this is late in an election year, there is no way we can go forward except together and no way anybody can win except by serving the people's urgent needs - the need to acknowledge, through massive spectacle, the greatness of Bharat Jagdeo and my bold, but ultimately impossible, attempt to shoulder his legacy. I have not sought this enormous responsibility, but I will not shirk it.

We cannot stand still or slip backwards. We must go forward now together - except of course for those senior Afro-Guyanese foreign service employees, or Afro-Guyanese contractors bidding for large scale state projects. Ladies and gentlemen, Guyana has a bright future ahead of it, a very bright future - things are more like today than they have ever been before.

That is why I urge you, come that date that His Excellency still has to graciously set at his personal discretion for the hosting of elections, please vote for me. Let progress continue, granted under vastly poorer leadership than we have at present. I may not be the best man for the job, but I am the man for the job... I think.


Let a lesser progress continue...

Source

The Abuse of Power
by Ruel Johnson on Monday, 05 September 2011 at 16:18

The Abuse of Power
A Play in One Act

[u]5 pm: Saturday, September 3/New Garden Street, Georgetown[/u]

[A closed wooden panel door - an engraving on it bears the letter "Cabinet Meeting Room" and under that a sign is hung "Do Not Disturb! Emergency Meeting in Progress". The sound of voices and chairs moving around. The door remains closed.]


Voice 1: Good. Everybody seated? Good. This Wikileaks thing is pissing me off. This is a $@#!ing nightmare. Robert, what - the - $@#!?

Voice 2: President, I have GINA on it. The Diary is now showing five times daily highlighting at the government's positive policies and programmes. Chronicle and Times have been banned from mentioning the word "leak" in any publication and -

Voice 1: Seriously? Seriously? For $@#!'s sake - "policies and pro -"... just shut up. Just shut up. Anil... speak. What are the options?

Voice 3: Well, Mr. President. While there may be no established precedent, and while certain jurisdictional hurdles may apply, I see no reason why some litigative measures cannot at least be embarked upon, even perhaps for the purposes of strategic obstruction and...

Voice 1: Litigative measures? Sounds like a good idea. Almost as brilliant an idea as the whole Kissoon libel case...

Voice 3: Mr. President, I -

Voice 1: ...which you, if I recall correctly, you assured, assured, me would go like clockwork...

Voice 3: Mr. President...

Voice 1: ...yet when I open the papers or turn on the TV I see Roger sounding like $@#!ing Kunta Kinte, and then limping around like somebody cut off his foot fo' truth. You mean that sort of litigative measure? Shut up. Anybody else other than the aspiring future President or the aspiring future AG here? Any ideas?

Voice 4: Um...

Voice 1: Nanda...

Voice 4: What about blackouts, sir?

Voice 3: How the dickens blackout come into this? Mr. President, I advised you about the need to inform this man about the drinking thing. That incident on Brickdam was as close to Kellawan as we could get, but we can't afford -

Voice 2: No, Anil, the man means a media blackout - we don't address the issue at all. We just focus on extolling the government's positive policies and programmes -

Voice 1: I already spoke about it, I said I was amused. Nanda, you suggesting a media blackout from now?

Voice 4: No, Mr. President. I mean [hic] actual blackouts.

Voice 3: I tell you the man drunk. Nanda.. Nanda...

Voice 4: I'm not drunk. [Hic] I had bout three shot alone. But but but listen... hear me out. People talking all de time bout it, right? Right? Well, well... if they get blackout, they gun talk bout that. [Hic] See?

[Silence]

Voice 5: Wait. Mr. President. You - you people can't seriously be considering this. Nanda is suggesting that we give the people blackouts to distract them from the Wikileaks releases...

Voice 1: You have a better, option, Ashni? Let me hear it. What? You suggest that I get Kwame to round up his boys to throw some shit over the fence of the US embassy?

Voice 5: Well, no, Mr. President, but blackouts on the back to school weekend? It would send the entire capital in turmoil. Uniforms to press -

Voice 1: Listen, Ashni. If I wanted to invite some bleeding-heart, conscience-prone woman here, I would have invited Priya to this session.

Voice 5: I'm just -

Voice 1: Just what? You being negative? You know how much I hate $@#!ing negativity.

Voice 6: Sir, I tend to agree with Ashni -

Voice 1: Mr. Whitakker! The condition of you coming here was for you to sit down and shut the $@#! up. That ass-kissing letter in Chronicle got you entry into this meeting, not the right to speak.

Voice 6: Yessuh...

Voice 1: If I wanted a $@#!ing token opinion I would have asked Roger to be here...

Voice 6: Yessuh...

Voice 1: Or Robert...

Voice 2: But...

Voice 1: Not you, you idiot... Corbin.

Voice 5: Sir, I still -

Voice 1: You know why I hired you, Ashni? You remind me of me years ago. Docile, young, bright, ambitious, a bit socially awkward. Like a younger me... except short... and fat... and not as good looking... and a lot more hair.

Voice 5: As a technocrat, sir, I reserve the right to respectfully -

Voice 1: The one thing I can't stand about you is that name. I mean, seriously, who names their son Ashni Kumar? It's like some $@#!ing Bollywood actress, like Shilpa Shetty, or Kareena Kapoor. Everytime I hear your $@#!ing name, for a split second I don't know whether I should be trying to $@#! you or ask you for Bank of Guyana financial updates.

Voice 5: But, Sir...

Voice 1: I can't explain it - I mean, Nanda here has a woman's name but I don't ever want to $@#!him.

Voice 4: Huh? [Hic]

Voice 1: You know what I think it is? I don't think it's your name. I think it's because from time to time, you tend to behave like you have a vagina. Do you have a vagina, Ashni?

Voice 5: No, Mr. President -

Voice 1: Good, then shut the $@#! up. Nanda, expand on the plan, please. I mean you're drunk as a $@#!ing fish, but you are like damn Darth Vader when it comes to this sort of shit.

Voice 4: Well [hic] we could do a couple test blackout tomorrow morning. Couple times during the day, and then a whole night one on Sunday night.

Voice 2: I object - I have at least twenty Grow More shows scheduled for tomorrow.

Voice 1: First of all, you don't get to object to s#$%t now - this is not 2016, and not even then. Understood? Good. Anil, get my namesake on the phone right now. Tell him what he has to do.

Voice 5: But, Sir... the babies...

Voice 1: What, Ashni? What?!

Voice 5: The hospital, sir... the babies... in the incubator -

Voice 1: $@#! em...

Voice 5: What?!

Voice 1: Did I stutter? No? Yeah? No? Good... $@#! em. Nanda, you brilliant $@#! - somebody get this man a drink. Anil, make the call.

Curtain

http://www.stabroeknews.com/20...eated-power-outages/

What is clearly at work here is that irrational fear of intellectualism
SEPTEMBER 11, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Dear Editor,

I couldn’t help but notice the Minister of Culture, Dr. Frank Anthony, taking the time to respond with no small amount of opprobrium – and via Stabroek News’ letter columns – to what he considered a journalistic breach of ethics by Stabroek News sports reporter, Marlon Munroe. In relation to Mr. Munroe’s reporting of a comment that the Minister took to be said in confidence, Dr. Anthony writes:
“At no time did he [Munroe] say that he would be using the contents of this private conversation to write an article… This smacks of unethical and unprofessional conduct.”

Speaking of which, I’d like to beg the editor’s indulgence in repeating my query to the Minister – or any officer he may wish to delegate to respond – regarding the public release of the names and relevant qualifications of the members of the literary contingents for Carifestas 8 and 9, and the recently concluded Inter-Guiana Cultural Festival.

At the risk of being accused of self-aggrandizement, let me offer a more or less detailed literary resume. I was a participant at the inaugural Cropper Foundation Writers’ in Trinidad in 2000; in 2001, I edited the Guyana Christmas Annual; in 2003, I received the Guyana Prize for Literature for Best First Book of Fiction – later that year I was a featured guest author at the inaugural Canadian-Caribbean Literary Expo in Toronto; in 2007, I received a certificate of recognition at the Guyana Prize 2006, for winning the 2002 Prize; I won the GT&T Carifesta X Literary Publication Award in 2008.

It is of course entirely possible that my literary qualifications – as outlined above – proved inadequate for membership on any of the government’s literary delegations to the festivals listed. I’ve simply asked the Minister – or any of his officers, Dr. James Rose, perhaps – to provide a list and the qualifications of those eminent literary persons who did make the cut, if only that I may be informed of the sort of creative achievement I should aspire to in order to fulfill the no-doubt objective placement criteria which governs the Ministry’s selection process for such contingents.
That rhetorical toying aside, again, I don’t expect an answer. There is none available that would not prove my point of the policy of nepotism that governs the government’s cultural policy. My original j’accuse against the Ministry is over a year old and I have not received so much as squeak in response.

For anyone interested in a practical demonstration of how the imbecilic arrogance that underwrites hubris can be exposed, this would be it. The government’s de facto policy towards literature produced in contemporary Guyana consists primarily of banking on the hope that whatever curious admixture of malign neglect and passive-aggressive sabotage that they subject it to is enough to damage it irreparably. What is clearly at work here is that irrational fear of intellectualism that afflicts the irredeemably ignorant or mediocre.

I know there is the temptation to see my apparently relentless tirade as primarily personal and perhaps even compensatory of some shortcoming on my part. I know for a fact that while there has been no public response to my queries, ironically, there is a snickering whispering in certain circles that I may be trying to protest myself into consideration for some nebulous special literary commendation or recognition, some sort of affirmative action.

So, when I argue for the Guyana Prize to be held regularly and not at the whim of the political administration, and with the stipulation that there should be literary workshops facilitated by the Prize Committee, it must be because that I want the Prize to be given to me and my deficient literary work and not to overseas-based writers and their better writing. It doesn’t matter that I’ve repeatedly said the Prize’ standards should not be lowered but the playing field leveled to give local authors the chance to compete effectively, in keeping with the developmental mandate, if not – granted – letter of the Prize. Nor does it matter that the academics in their thrall are not falling over themselves to pronounce on my literary incompetence, despite my work being readily available.

Or when I point out the nepotism that governs the selection for Guyana’s representation at cultural events, it must be because I simply didn’t make the cut and protesting is my way of getting in through the backdoor. It doesn’t matter that the Minister of Culture can’t simply discredit my accusations by publishing the names, qualifications and criteria for selection of those chosen to represent Guyana’s literary community at cultural events. This is of course the sort of ironic, disingenuous, self-deluding, self-righteous rationalization that is the last refuge of the corrupt and the intellectually bereft. These things are whispered but never expressed outside of their close circles because they cannot withstand the slightest interrogation.

Let me contextualise Dr. Frank Anthony’s policy in the selection of literary delegations thusly:
Imagine Ramnaresh Sarwan utterly dominating cricket locally, but the government of Guyana denying him the opportunity to represent the country internationally because he expressed legitimate criticism of the Demerara Cricket Board. Now imagine Sarwan writing a letter to the press, publicly challenging the Minister – who also has responsibility for sport – to release the batting averages of those cricketers who were selected, and being met with silence.

All that said, I admit freely that I owe the good Minister an apology. While I may have focused on his indefensible tendency to perpetuate discriminatory practices, it was merely to illustrate that his particular incompetence and prejudice as Minister responsible for culture policy is, ex pide Herculem, reflective of governmental policy throughout. Dr. Anthony – as both a government and ruling party executive – cannot escape his actions being construed as representative of the prevailing political administration.

Someone needs to send the administration a memo – the concept of eminent domain does not extend to the mind or conscience. And while Minister Anthony is free to personally indulge in that particularly parochial delusion, he and the government he represents should be aware – as I think would be obvious considering the present environment in which they find themselves – that while this sort of ill-advised and petulant policy of the suppression of ideas may have worked forty years ago in Soviet Russia, it cannot be sustained here.

Ruel Johnson

Source

Every aspect of the administration’s engagements with the arts and culture has been based on ad hoc spectacle
By STABROEK STAFF | LETTERS | THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

Dear Editor,

I had the great privilege of reading the ‘Appreciation’ magazine, ‘Forged By Fire: The Jagdeo Presidency.‘ Of all the forgeries presented therein, I’d like to focus on just one. There is no greater betrayal of the public trust than that committed by the man of letters. We expect the politician to be corrupt; we expect the people to be corruptible; and priests, as the good Juan Edghill has of recent ably proven, have long been known to subsume their theological commitments to more temporal ones – but from the academic, we expect a higher standard. With knowledge comes power comes responsibility, particularly the responsibility to the dissemination of evidentiary or empirical truth. This is a responsibility that Mr Al Creighton seems to have cast off with reckless abandon in his ‘Appreciation’ article, ‘Playing an active role in the arts and culture.‘

First and arguably least of all, in his unabashed hagiography of Mr Jagdeo’s cultural policy, Mr Creighton casually cites the “publication of a Carifesta Anthology of Poetry.” The learned academic seems confused with regard to the etymological connotation of the word “publication,” so let me humbly remind him: ‘Publication’ means “the preparation and issuing of a book, journal, piece of music, or other work for public sale… (2) the action of making something generally known.” It stands to reason, since its Latin origin, publicare, means ‘to make public.’

As a contributor to what I was told would be a “Carifesta Anthology of Poetry,” I am yet to receive an invitation to the launch, a courtesy copy of the ‘publication,’ nor have I seen it anywhere one would expect to see a ‘publication,’ ie, in the public, three years after Carifesta X has come and gone. In fact, I believe I can say without fear of contradiction that there has been not a single publication of contemporary literary work that the 12-year Jagdeo administration has either originated or been closely associated with. Indeed, successive PPP administrations from 1992 to 2008 have not published or caused to publish anything literary, in stark and ironic contrast to the plethora of government funded or supported literary publications between 1972 and 1992.

Mr Creighton cites the 2009 establishment of Caribbean Press as proof of Jagdeo’s commitment to the development of literature. The administration of the press exists outside the Caribbean, the editorial board is not based in the region, and the books are not printed here – the Ministry of Culture, under which aegis the press is said to operate, does not have a Caribbean Press office or even liaison. The Caribbean Press is in fact run out of the University of Warwick, and notably not out of the University of Guyana. If this is not illustrative of the President’s perception of the competence of local academia, including Mr Creighton – the most public face of the administration’s literary development policy – I have no idea what is; ditto for the composition of the advisory board. The 24-page full colour supplement praising the President is 24 pages more than the PPP’s total involvement in local literary publication in 20 years. The government is free to respond to prove me wrong.

Mr Creighton cites, as an “objective measure of the president’s contribution to the arts and culture,” Mr Jagdeo’s “ready support for the Guyana Prize, which has been consistent during his tenure.” Either Mr Creighton is suffering from a severe case of receptive aphasia or he is being completely disingenuous. The Guyana Prize is a biennial prize, meaning that it is supposed to be held every two years. Mr Jagdeo had a twelve-year presidency, under which the Prize was held four times. Mr Creighton needs to check his maths, and then research the meaning of the word ‘consistent.’

And let me save Mr Creighton the trouble of falling on his own sword verbally but not in action. He has taken the line of taking personal blame for the failure of the Prize being held between 2006 and 2011: the Prize has a Management Committee which as far as I know does not consist of solely of Mr Creighton, who is in fact simply the Secretary, not the Chair. A President that is “consistent in his ready support” for the Guyana Prize for Literature would have – providing of course that his Cabinet had made the requisite funds readily available – fired the entire Management Committee for their incompetence. It is telling that Mr Jagdeo’s self-acknowledged propensity for micromanaging did not extend to this eminently manageable scenario.

I refuse to touch on the incompetence and discrimination involved in the government’s involvement in cultural festivals, something which Mr Creighton has predictably high praise for. The Minister of Culture’s silence on a tiny aspect of accountability in this regard speaks volumes in itself about the government’s execution of its engagement in cultural festivals, and contradicts Mr Creighton’s shamelessly adulatory prose. Every single aspect of the Jagdeo administration’s engagement with arts and culture – from the Guyana Prize to the President’s Film Endowment – has been based not on a coherent cultural development policy but on ad hoc spectacle and show with little substance or sustainability.

The only thing that I find irrefutable in Mr Creighton’s article is his assessment of the President’s speech at the Guyana Prize for Literature awards earlier this month. It’s an expertly written piece, eloquent, well-crafted, inspiring. Indeed, in light of how diametrically the sentiments expressed differ from the President’s actions, had Mr Jagdeo submitted it to the Guyana Prize this year, the Best First Book of Fiction category would not have remained vacant and the President would have added another trophy to his collection of well-deserved awards.

Yours faithfully,
Ruel Johnson
Advisor on Cultural Policy
Alliance For Change

Stabroek News

Kaieteur News

quote:

Originally posted by Gerhard Ramsaroop:
The Abuse of Power
by Ruel Johnson on Monday, 05 September 2011 at 16:18

The Abuse of Power
A Play in One Act

[u]5 pm: Saturday, September 3/New Garden Street, Georgetown[/u]

[A closed wooden panel door - an engraving on it bears the letter "Cabinet Meeting Room" and under that a sign is hung "Do Not Disturb! Emergency Meeting in Progress". The sound of voices and chairs moving around. The door remains closed.]


Voice 1: Good. Everybody seated? Good. This Wikileaks thing is pissing me off. This is a $@#!ing nightmare. Robert, what - the - $@#!?

Voice 2: President, I have GINA on it. The Diary is now showing five times daily highlighting at the government's positive policies and programmes. Chronicle and Times have been banned from mentioning the word "leak" in any publication and -

Voice 1: Seriously? Seriously? For $@#!'s sake - "policies and pro -"... just shut up. Just shut up. Anil... speak. What are the options?

Voice 3: Well, Mr. President. While there may be no established precedent, and while certain jurisdictional hurdles may apply, I see no reason why some litigative measures cannot at least be embarked upon, even perhaps for the purposes of strategic obstruction and...

Voice 1: Litigative measures? Sounds like a good idea. Almost as brilliant an idea as the whole Kissoon libel case...

Voice 3: Mr. President, I -

Voice 1: ...which you, if I recall correctly, you assured, assured, me would go like clockwork...

Voice 3: Mr. President...

Voice 1: ...yet when I open the papers or turn on the TV I see Roger sounding like $@#!ing Kunta Kinte, and then limping around like somebody cut off his foot fo' truth. You mean that sort of litigative measure? Shut up. Anybody else other than the aspiring future President or the aspiring future AG here? Any ideas?

Voice 4: Um...

Voice 1: Nanda...

Voice 4: What about blackouts, sir?

Voice 3: How the dickens blackout come into this? Mr. President, I advised you about the need to inform this man about the drinking thing. That incident on Brickdam was as close to Kellawan as we could get, but we can't afford -

Voice 2: No, Anil, the man means a media blackout - we don't address the issue at all. We just focus on extolling the government's positive policies and programmes -

Voice 1: I already spoke about it, I said I was amused. Nanda, you suggesting a media blackout from now?

Voice 4: No, Mr. President. I mean [hic] actual blackouts.

Voice 3: I tell you the man drunk. Nanda.. Nanda...

Voice 4: I'm not drunk. [Hic] I had bout three shot alone. But but but listen... hear me out. People talking all de time bout it, right? Right? Well, well... if they get blackout, they gun talk bout that. [Hic] See?

[Silence]

Voice 5: Wait. Mr. President. You - you people can't seriously be considering this. Nanda is suggesting that we give the people blackouts to distract them from the Wikileaks releases...

Voice 1: You have a better, option, Ashni? Let me hear it. What? You suggest that I get Kwame to round up his boys to throw some shit over the fence of the US embassy?

Voice 5: Well, no, Mr. President, but blackouts on the back to school weekend? It would send the entire capital in turmoil. Uniforms to press -

Voice 1: Listen, Ashni. If I wanted to invite some bleeding-heart, conscience-prone woman here, I would have invited Priya to this session.

Voice 5: I'm just -

Voice 1: Just what? You being negative? You know how much I hate $@#!ing negativity.

Voice 6: Sir, I tend to agree with Ashni -

Voice 1: Mr. Whitakker! The condition of you coming here was for you to sit down and shut the $@#! up. That ass-kissing letter in Chronicle got you entry into this meeting, not the right to speak.

Voice 6: Yessuh...

Voice 1: If I wanted a $@#!ing token opinion I would have asked Roger to be here...

Voice 6: Yessuh...

Voice 1: Or Robert...

Voice 2: But...

Voice 1: Not you, you idiot... Corbin.

Voice 5: Sir, I still -

Voice 1: You know why I hired you, Ashni? You remind me of me years ago. Docile, young, bright, ambitious, a bit socially awkward. Like a younger me... except short... and fat... and not as good looking... and a lot more hair.

Voice 5: As a technocrat, sir, I reserve the right to respectfully -

Voice 1: The one thing I can't stand about you is that name. I mean, seriously, who names their son Ashni Kumar? It's like some $@#!ing Bollywood actress, like Shilpa Shetty, or Kareena Kapoor. Everytime I hear your $@#!ing name, for a split second I don't know whether I should be trying to $@#! you or ask you for Bank of Guyana financial updates.

Voice 5: But, Sir...

Voice 1: I can't explain it - I mean, Nanda here has a woman's name but I don't ever want to $@#!him.

Voice 4: Huh? [Hic]

Voice 1: You know what I think it is? I don't think it's your name. I think it's because from time to time, you tend to behave like you have a vagina. Do you have a vagina, Ashni?

Voice 5: No, Mr. President -

Voice 1: Good, then shut the $@#! up. Nanda, expand on the plan, please. I mean you're drunk as a $@#!ing fish, but you are like damn Darth Vader when it comes to this sort of shit.

Voice 4: Well [hic] we could do a couple test blackout tomorrow morning. Couple times during the day, and then a whole night one on Sunday night.

Voice 2: I object - I have at least twenty Grow More shows scheduled for tomorrow.

Voice 1: First of all, you don't get to object to s#$%t now - this is not 2016, and not even then. Understood? Good. Anil, get my namesake on the phone right now. Tell him what he has to do.

Voice 5: But, Sir... the babies...

Voice 1: What, Ashni? What?!

Voice 5: The hospital, sir... the babies... in the incubator -

Voice 1: $@#! em...

Voice 5: What?!

Voice 1: Did I stutter? No? Yeah? No? Good... $@#! em. Nanda, you brilliant $@#! - somebody get this man a drink. Anil, make the call.

Curtain

http://www.stabroeknews.com/20...eated-power-outages/

This is excellent stuff! Ruel is brilliant!

I just now read the skit by Ruel and nearly pee myself with laff

. . . captures the true essence of The Cabal in full 'deliberative' mode.

Simply BRILLIANT!!

What was the cost of producing the 30 titles for the Caribbean Press?
By STABROEK STAFF | LETTERS | FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2011

Dear Editor,

Launched in May 2009, the Caribbean Press initiative came out of the President’s promise in 2008 to commit US$100,000 – some $20 million – annually towards an indigenous regional publishing house, one dedicated as it was understood then to the publication of contemporary Caribbean writing. As it is now, what we know that the Caribbean Press is nothing close to what was promised; no contemporary writers have so far been published; the editorial board exists outside of the region; the books are printed outside of not only Guyana but the region; and despite the Ministry of Culture taking responsibility for the press, there is not so much as a contact person available at the ministry responsible for it.

While I find as indefensible that the policy direction and management of what is supposed to be an indigenous press lies completely outside of the region, equally as important is the issue of fiscal accountability. I have learned from the press that there are 30 titles that have been and are being printed; we further understand that there is a standard number of 400 copies of each of these titles being printed. Having examined similarly sized publications produced locally, and comparing commercial quotations for more high-gloss publications regionally, we can safely say that the production costs of the Caribbean Press should not exceed a generously estimated US$5 per copy.

If we consider that there are a total of 12,000 (30 x 400) books printed this should result in a total estimated cost of US$60,000. And, further, if we were to take on face value the President’s commitment of US$100,000 – which has not been modified or otherwise qualified since it was made – as annual, it means that so far US $300,000 or $60 million has been invested in the Caribbean Press. If it is that the commitment was a one-off, then it would be simply the US$100,000. Either way, assuming that my estimated printing costs and number of copies produced are correct, we still have either US $40,000 or US $240,000 to account for.

While focusing on accountability in the execution of infrastructural or material projects is an important part of the media’s role, equally important is the interrogation of the use of funds in the execution of service provision projects paid for by the taxpayer as well.

Yours faithfully,
Ruel Johnson

Source

quote:

Originally posted by redux:
I just now read the skit by Ruel and nearly pee myself with laff

. . . captures the true essence of The Cabal in full 'deliberative' mode.

Simply BRILLIANT!!

This stuff is funny, very very funny. We need more humor now a days.