Dear Editor,
On Tuesday, September 22, 2020 I wrote a letter, in which I made two salient points. First, I referred to the apparent blockade of my letters by Guyana Times, in particular. Second, I referred to the fabrication of a quotation by Guyana Times` Eyewitness column in its attempt to malign, and negatively portray, me to their readership, who they do not afford the opportunity to hear, from me. This is gross misuse of the fourth estate, which is a national asset and should be at the disposal of all, once they are sharing pertinent information, accurately, or contributing to the society`s stock of knowledge.
I write again to highlight that quite the opposite has become the norm. Even the national newspapers, whose material means are owned by the people of Guyana, seems to me abusing the fourth estate and denying me the means of freedom of expression, which is guaranteed by the Constitution.
Worse than that, is that the said estate is being utilized by Guyana Times to respond to my letters, which they do not publish, and even worse is their persistent fabrications in those responses.
In my letter of the September 22, 2020 I denied that I authored the following quotation: “The murderers saw themselves as superior to the persons slaughtered. Historically, this was the fate of Africans. The individual also felt they should be protected by the State (controlled by the PPP), so justice cannot be gotten for the Henry`s.” Whether that quotation represents the truth or not, it cannot be attributed to me and represents nothing less that gutter journalism. Like the mischievous author of the Eyewitness column, I refer the public to the SAGE programme (Race, Power and Peaceful Co-existence) on Facebook to made the judgement call for themselves. In a similar manner, Eyewitness attributed to me the confession that ‘I had been inducted in Moscow into the intricacies of Marxism as a youth … but now has taken an instinctive African position’. While that was not a quotation, the presence of an ellipsis in the sentence implicitly makes it a quotation or signifies the misuse of the ellipsis. Not even an exemplar of good Grammar can be taken away from reading the column. The fifth estate, in the person of Eyewitness is destroying the Nation morally and destroying and failing it academically. This destruction/hemorrhaging has got be arrested. I must however commend Mr. Ravi Dev for attesting to one of my rebuttals of Eyewitness` misrepresentation in relation to my historic contention that ‘Guyana is a plural society that needs attention’.
I will be posting on my Facebook page my ‘Bisram letter’, which seeks to put our country’s history into perspective and to expose the agenda of Guyana Times, which ducks my letters but misuses them as a spring board to malign and disparage those who they do not favour.
Yours truly,
Vincent Alexander
