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On Friday, March 31, President Irfaan Ali held a press conference in his hometown of Leonora, West Coast Demerara. That event is highly noteworthy as one of the strangest of its kind in Guyana, and not in a good way.
President Irfaan Ali’s office announced that there would be a press conference a mere hour and a half before it was scheduled to begin. As such, many media houses were not aware of the event. And those that learned of it were scarcely prepared to attend. As a result, only two private media outlets were represented, while, of course, reporters from the State controlled publications were present.
The event – being held in President Ali’s hometown – was packed with his party’s supporters. This is understandable in light of the fact that the whole two-day event was billed as an “outreach.”
The press conference was held under a tent. Strangely, members of the public who were obviously supporters of the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP) were allowed to be near the few journalists who attended. Such an arrangement is certainly unusual since it may be expected that independent reporters may ask hard questions of the Head of State, and his supporters may, naturally, not appreciate such.
In other words, the whole arrangement reeks of a setup for media intimidation that could have put the physical safety of members of the media in serious jeopardy.
And of course – as could have been predicted – members of the press were abused by President Ali’s supporters. Fortunately, no journalist was physically attacked.
When journalists from the private media houses asked the president about arrangements for Guyana’s oil and gas sector, those reporters were heckled and verbally abused. Further, the Head of State did absolutely nothing to stop his supporters from harassing the reporters. Worse still, he refused to answer the questions put to him, saying that the information will be revealed in due course.
Perhaps, President Ali needs to be reminded that his government was elected by the Guyanese people who are his bosses. Citizens of this country deserve answers whenever they ask. It is not up to the PPP regime to decide when the people will get answers to their questions. The PPP administration needs to know its rightful place in the scheme of things; the PPP government of Guyana serves the people of Guyana, not the other way around.
President of the Guyana Press Association (GPA), Nazima Raghubir strongly condemned the circumstances under which President Ali hosted the media conference.
Raghubir said, 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.”
The head of the GPA added that, “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.”
In response to criticisms from the press fraternity, Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for the media, Kwame McCoy defended the government’s organisation of the event.
This publication is of the view that the PPP regime owes the media fraternity an apology. The entire fiasco was a farcical political drama. Moreover, it puts the safety of people – particularly members of the media – in danger.
This publication believes that the PPP’s actions in this regard were deliberate and calculated. It is impossible for any right thinking, reasonable person to not be aware of how such an arrangement could and did turn out.
That being the case, one may arrive only at one of two conclusions: either the PPP regime planned to intimidate and endanger private journalists, or, the officials of government who organised the event cannot see further than their noses.
