PPP/C Administration does not encourage hostilities towards media

Dear Editor,
The President of the Guyana Press Association (GPA), Nazima Raghubir is quoted in the Sunday April 02 article, as accusing the Government of insulting the high esteem of some sections of the media fraternity and opening doors to attacks on the press.
This accusation appears to have stemmed from the conduct of a presidential press conference hosted by His Excellency Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali at the Leonora Track and Field Centre, during the wrap up phase of a regional outreach by the Office of the President.
Raghubir’s wild accusations are in consonance with a plethora of grouses the Kaieteur News has sought to raise about the press conference, ranging from their dissatisfaction with the one-and-a-half-hour notice issued; President Ali’s deferral of questions related to their oil and gas obsession, and the tented setting being an affront to the dignity and nobility of the media, as seen through their perspective.
They are claiming that they somehow felt intimidated by the fact that residents of Region Three who had been benefiting from direct Government services and presidential interventions to solve age-old problems across their communities during the two-day outreach, became voluntary observers to the open-tent press conference, with some intermittently choosing to express their disgust with some reporters disinterest in the substantive matters addressed during the outreach exercise.
It would seem that the vehemence with which both the Kaieteur News and the Guyana Press Association have chosen to lament their peeves, is signalling the commencement of a strange new dispensation for free media practice in Guyana.
The standard global practice of the press being available and on stand-by for continuous coverage at a moment’s notice, at any site where the Head of State of a country is actively engaged, appears to no longer apply to this particular media house and the GPA, thereby rendering a one-and-a-half-hour notice for a presidential press conference at the very site, terribly insulative to them.
The tented setting, comfortable enough for thousands of Guyanese working class citizens and the President of the country, are now somehow beneath the station of Kaieteur News reporters and Nazima Raghubir.
And for some troubling reason, the peoples’ freedom to openly express dissatisfaction with some reporter’s persistent disinterest in the issues other than oil and gas that are germane to the lives of Guyanese and their communities, are mute, to the pre-eminence of the freedoms and special interests of Kaieteur News and the GPA President.
The records of Friday’s press conference at Leonora would reveal that there were no acts of hostility towards any member of the media at the press conference in question, that the PPP/C Administration does not encourage any such hostilities, and the track record of the Irfaan Ali Government stands tested, proven and unrivalled with regards to extending respect, empowering support and the building of an enabling environment for unfettered freedom, access and advancement of the whole media fraternity in Guyana.
While the Government of Guyana presses ahead with the important business of empowering citizens and transforming the country, those in the media with misplaced egos and other agendas would do well to stay abreast with the imperatives of the new, nimble and evolving environment that now underpins the national ethos.
President Mohamed Irfaan Ali will continue to avail his office and Cabinet to the press wherever and whenever the people’s business requires attention, as has consistently been the practice since assuming office in 2020.

Sincerely,
Kwame McCoy
Minister within the
Office of the Prime
Minister