Stabroek News passes

The announcement that Stabroek News would cease publication next month has shocked most Guyanese – and certainly myself. Upon assuming office in August 1985, after LFS Burnham’s passing, Desmond Hoyte embarked on a mission to roll back the former’s “cooperative socialist” experiment that created a state monopoly in almost every sector of the country, including the media. David de Caries had been a member of the leftist, “progressive” New World Group of Caribbean intellectuals “who would interrogate the present and future of the West Indies.” He had penned the featured article, “Caribbean Integration”, in the inaugural edition of the group’s quarterly “New World Journal” in March 1963. De Caries, a lawyer in private practice, epitomised the group’s commitment to liberal principles of individual rights, such as freedom of expression, and most trenchantly the rule of law. He was encouraged to launch a newspaper here to articulate and disseminate such a perspective by a New World colleague who was Managing Director of the Trinidad Express.
The Stabroek News was launched in late 1986, helped by a US$100,000 grant from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which had been formed three years earlier by the Reagan administration to assist in the fight against communism. It funded activities, with a gentler face, that had previously been performed by the CIA. In the “policy statement” in the very first edition of the “independent newspaper”, he wrote candidly, “A newspaper represents the interests, outlook (and prejudices) of those who own and control it… By “independent” we do not mean free of any perception of the interests and opinions of its owners. No paper is, or ever will be, so “free”. We mean free of direction by any outside institution… Because the role of the press is essentially to investigate, inform and analyse, however, and because of the difficult conditions that now prevail, it is likely that we will on many occasions perform a critical function and will often have to adopt an adversarial role. So be it.”
I was living in New Jersey at the time and drove over to the Hillside Ave, Queens store of Tony Yasin, who would later purchase Guyana Stores, to pick up the initial weekly Sunday editions that were available the very next day. It was a breath of fresh air. As promised, it certainly reflected the perspective of the owner, and I remember taking him to task in letters he published over a centre-page headline, “Indian Guyanese enter mainstream culture,” after I remigrated to Guyana in 1988. I thought the article was condescending to Indian Guyanese culture, but he believed, as did Desmond Hoyte, who entered the discussion, and Dr Jagan, who did not, that we shared in a common “Guyanese Creole Culture”.
But David did believe that an Indian Guyanese point of view could be articulated in SN, and after publishing several of my letters, asked me to be a columnist (unpaid!) for the newspaper – which I was for several years. But it was after the Jan 12th riots in which Indians were beaten in Georgetown following the PNC’s loss in the Dec 1997 elections, when the Herdmanson Accord was signed by the PPP and PNC, that David definitively demonstrated his commitment to freedom of expression. I wrote a letter, which was published and began, “The Accord rewards the PNC for jettisoning the rule of law and due process in Guyana. It rewards the PNC for demonstrating to the people that if you lose by a set of rules you yourself had drafted, simply seize the umpire and demand new rules which will guarantee your victory. The Accord rewards the PNC for its wilfully lawless, bullying tactics, culminating in the January 12 pogrom launched by African-Guyanese against Indian-Guyanese. If not actually executed by the PNC (and this is most arguable), then at a minimum it was prompted by the reckless and inflammatory statements and actions of the PNC leadership and occasioned by the illegal march following Justice Bernard’s ruling… And this is precisely what the PNC has been doing and continues to do.”
The letter precipitated a wide-ranging debate in the letters page of the SN, and in the estimation of many, it was the beginning of Indian Guyanese in the modern era finding their voice to help constitute a more inclusive “Guyanese culture”. While “la luta continua”, it is ironic that SN will cease being a part of that process.