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The Guyana Press Association takes note of the fulminations of Christopher ‘Kit’ Nascimento who is best connected to an era characterised by widespread gagging of the media by various subterfuges including the non-issuance of radio broadcasting licenses after the economic conditions of that time had forced the privately-owned Rediffusion to pack up and depart. Mr Nascimento’s methodology of media censorship and control remains priceless only for the utility value of media suppression.
That period had been a sore and painful one in which newsprint was banned, importation of a new printing press for the People’s Progressive Party’s Mirror newspaper had been blocked, a plethora of libel suits had been filed against newspapers and publications including the Catholic Standard, Mirror, Day Clean and the Stabroek News.
Coming after the closure of CNS TV 6 in 2008 and the ban on state media advertisements to Stabroek News, the resort to the reincarnation of the Nascimentonian model of press conference control reeks of a rapidly sliding descent to the bottomless pit of a violation of press freedom.
Indeed the Guyana Press Association had been watching for several months President Ali’s resort to public statements on Social Media, without question by journalists, and the weekly 60-minute monologue by the Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Mr Anil Nandlall on Social Media.
Nascimento’s so far ‘guest’ appearance at a presidential press conference has done nothing but bring into question the democratic credentials of the People’s Progressive Party which had pre-1992 promised to break with the past. In fact, for those who have lived through that sordid period of authoritarianism could not help feeling a sense of a complete reversal to that dark period, one which Nascimento played a central role in.
The reliance by Nascimento on qualifications, experience, and an award for freedom of expression to locate some unjustifiable credibility to continue the perpetuation of control is most disgusting. One hopes that he is not disregarding the qualitative contributions of the likes of Father Andrew Morrison, Mr C.D. Kirton, Mr David De Caires, Mr Bert Wilkinson, Mr Pete Ninvalle, Mr Sharief Khan et al to fearless and independent journalism who may or may not have been lettered or awarded as he brags about.
The GPA hopes that Nascimento’s reference to his qualification is not a hint of licensing of media workers as is the case in dictatorships elsewhere.
Amid repeatedly strident calls for presidential press conferences, eventually the President acquiesced but with a control button to his side. The re-emergence of Nascimento near the prime ministership cum executive presidency must be regarded as nothing else but a tool of repression through the control of the media by the application of the elements of time, space, and number of questions.
Dating back to the presidencies of Dr Cheddi Jagan, and Mr Bharrat Jagdeo and, as Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon and Ms Gail Teixeira, all had hosted press conferences in the spacious Credentials Room of Office of the President. President Ali, flanked by several of his ministers, had also held a news conference at the very spacious Baridi Benab, State House.
The not so creeping imposition of limitations on the media was to evidently rear its ugly head of the past at the joint press conference by the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken and President Ali. Prior, media houses had been contacted to indicate whether they would be asking questions and a number of media houses did so. However, the plot unfurled when they were informed that only two local journalists and two foreign journalists who had traveled with Mr Blinken would have been allowed to ask questions. Despite the fact that a number of Guyanese journalists had indicated by the show of their hands much earlier, the pre-planned selection of representatives from the government-owned and controlled National Communications Network and the online news entity, Newsroom, were allowed to ask questions. It must be noted that the foreign media asked Mr Blinken more than one question without objection. Surely, the United States Embassy and by extension the United States government must take note of this calculated control under the charade of press liberty that has been perpetrated by the Guyana government.
In the days following, the non-government-owned and controlled and non-pro-government media were not invited to cover the swearing in of the members of the Public Service Commission on Thursday, July 13, 2023, and the Judicial Service Commission on Friday, July 14, 2023. The reason given on both occasions was insufficient space to accommodate the media.
Returning to the President’s press conference on Thursday, July 13, 2023, a time constraint was imposed on the media by the fact that President Ali’s opening statement was 76 minutes (1 hour, 16 minutes) long. If the President’s intention was to inform the nation and the world about newsworthy aspects of his government, then he failed miserably to do so because most of his statement had been covered in previous news reports, hence hardly anything there constituted “news”. However, if the plan was to dominate his first solo appearance(unaccompanied by ministers) before the media at a press conference by restricting the duration and number of questions, then his decision to hire Mr Nascimento achieved that objective albeit in a limited self-serving manner.
En passe, enquiries from our colleagues in the Caribbean countries reveal that there is no strict timeline for the arrival of the media to prime ministerial press conferences.
It will be difficult to the point of almost being impossible for President Ali and Nascimento to not be aware that there were other burning national, regional and international issues that the media and by extension the public had needed the President’s perspective on. Indeed, qualitatively Guyanese might have benefitted from those other questions that could not have been asked.
Whether or not one of Nascimento’s new-found contractual obligations is the creation of a pool of presidential correspondents as is the case at the United States White House, then he needs to adopt the entire model whose features include 10 minute or less opening statements, more than one questions and press conferences of under one hour. If the President and Nascimento want to operate by First World/American media standards, as they ought to, then the GPA hopes that they will not be offended by several questions by the media corps even after the President declares the press conference closed. The POTUS, in fact, sometimes goes on to answer those.
Regarding Nascimento’s mention of the GPA’s elections, we maintain our firm stance that it was a democratic process involving legitimate members of our organisation.
Perhaps, the single and most important achievement of the press engagement for the President, the government, Consultant Nascimento and the media was the fact that it started promptly, ushering in for the first time the discipline of punctuality. Congratulations Kit! Time to move on to conquering green verbs and poor pronunciations and anticipate responses to hard, technical questions so that the output will not be superfluous but detailed, convincing and persuasive.
In conclusion, Nascimento should be aware that in a modern, technologically-driven media landscape within a democracy, his dictatorial approach of attempting to direct the media’s focus and threatening and intimidating media workers with legal action is outdated and will face opposition.
