The PPP Discovers WikiLeaks
Read by Neilsen McKenzie, AFC Coordinator

The AFC is very delighted that the PPP has indeed being reading the recently released WikiLeaks cables. The very fact that the PPP has begun to refer and quote from them is important. However this invocation cannot be selective but rather comprehensive in scope.

The AFC submits that in functional, normal and workable democracies, the recent WikiLeaks revelations would have been sufficiently damning materials for Ministers to resign and for Governments to be voted out. In no functional democracy would a Presidential Candidate say that he is slightly amused by them. An important outcome of the WikiLeaks revelations is the establishment, beyond all doubt, that this PPP administration has been linked to the Roger Khan death squad. Thus, it has been established that the PPP has indeed criminalized the State.

In arriving at this established conclusion, the AFC refers the Guyanese people to a cable dated July 31, 2009 when Charge d’ Affaires Karen Williams told Washington that when Roger Khan was being pursued by US law enforcement in 2006, he had put Leslie Ramsammy’s name forward as a potential mediator between himself and the US Government. Williams added that a “close associate of Khan worked with Ramsammy in the Ministry of Health, and the former death squad leader himself is widely rumoured to have had regular Saturday meetings with the Minister.”

Further, Williams cabled in 2009 that “the consenus among International Donor community observers is that democracy and the rule of law is at its lowest ebb since the 2006 elections. The 2011 elections, although nearly two years away, already seem to loom large on the horizon. Serious policy reform projects, such as the security sector, have fallen to the way side…”

The AFC submits that the present posturing and attitude of this Government pretending as if none of this happened is shameful and can only occur in a society in which issues have not served as the criteria for the election of Governments. This is truly a situation where a sitting Government has breached with impunity the law of the land.

The AFC challenges the PPP and their cronies at NCN, the Chronicle and now the Times to publish the names of the other countries who have had both their Commissioner of Police and Minister of Home Affairs’ visas revoked by key nations of the free world.

The Guyanese people will not be hoodwinked by the PPP’s penchant for the bending and twisting of truth and reality in service of its depraved political survival. Despite all the chicanery practiced by these PPP aligned media entities, the fact remains that the PPP regime has endangered the Guyanese people in a manner that has no parallel in this nation’s history.

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Securing Press Freedom
Read by Gerhard Ramsaroop, AFC Executive Member

The Alliance For Change notes with increasing consternation the decline into rabid political partisanship being undertaken by the state and government-supported media. Even more sinister however is the trend towards what appears for all intents and purposes to be a centrally directed campaign against the opposition in general – and the Alliance in particular.

On the one hand we find, for example, the Guyana Times/Guyana Chronicle collusion in peddling the myth of a leadership crisis in the Alliance, even as the PPP has failed to select a Prime Ministerial candidate weeks away from a National Elections. On the other hand however, this sets a precedent a dangerous precedent for the peddling of shameless propaganda during the upcoming season.

A favourite theme of this government is that there is freedom of expression in Guyana and that media operatives here do not face the extremes faced by journalists in other countries. We would like to remind the government of the preamble to the Declaration of Chapultepec, signed by President Jagdeo in May, 2002, which states: “There are still countries whose despotic governments abjure every freedom, particularly those freedoms related to expression. Criminals, terrorists and drug traffickers still threaten, attack and murder journalists. But that is not the only way to harm a free press and free expression. The temptation to control and regulate has led to decisions that limit the independent action of the media, of journalists and of citizens who wish to seek and disseminate information and opinions.”

Banning of journalists from press conferences, abuse of the state media towards partisan ends, collaboration with and state support private media entities to publish a partisan line: all these limit the independence of the media in Guyana. The Media Monitoring Unit of the Guyana Elections Commission was recently reestablished. We at the Alliance For Change recommends that, in light of the present trend, the MMU issue fortnightly reports assessing the media environment in Guyana, encouraging what needs to be encouraged in local electoral journalism, and censuring – without fear or favour – that which needs to be censured.

Outside of the Unit however we would like to take the opportunity to call on the members of the Guyana Press Association to not only remain vigilant against this increased tendency to thwart and undermine the democratic function of the media, but to be vocal in its condemnation whenever such infringements occur.

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Cultural policy for a New Guyana
Read by Ruel Johnson

The AFC would like to take the opportunity respond to an article published in the ‘Appreciation’ magazine, written by University of Guyana senior academic Al Creighton, one which commends what the author claims to the President’s sustained commitment to Arts and Culture.

Publications

Mr. Creighton casually cites the “publication of a CARIFESTA Anthology of Poetry.” Three years after CARIFESTA X has come and gone, no such publication has been made available to the general public. If such material has been printed, it cannot be considered a publication if no one has seen it. Successive PPP administrations from 1992 to 2011 have not published or caused to be published any local literary work, in stark and ironic contrast to the plethora of government funded or supported literary publications between 1972 and 1992. 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 Guyana Prize

Mr. Creighton cites, as an “objective measure of the president’s contribution to the arts and culture”, Jagdeo’s “ready support for the Guyana Prize, which has been consistent during his tenure.” 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 math, and then research the meaning of the word ‘consistent’.

PPP Cultural Policy

The PPP/C 2006 Manifesto’s plan for the development arts and culture reads in totality:
“We will strengthen measures to promote the rich multi-cultural diversity of Guyana and utilise culture to promote harmony among people. More will be spent on:
• Providing opportunities for our writers, musicians, artistes, actors, dancers and others to develop their talents.
• Research and documentation into various aspects of culture with resulting publications
• The new National Archives will improve the opportunity for research and the promotion of greater awareness of our history.”

As vague and insubstantial as this is, not even this has been adhered to. 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.

Shameless and compromised academic gilding of Jagdeo’s cultural policy doesn’t make it any better.

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