Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Nov 04, 2008 News
DAVID DE CAIRES: AN APPRECIATION
Guyana has lost a great man; not just a great and brave newspaper editor, but a fine and gentle man. I worked for David for ten years. He was always encouraging, always full of praise, sometimes a word of caution. He never shirked a decision, however tough it was. He was a writer’s editor.
He actually liked journalists and journalism – not that common among media suits. The flower of democracy has bloomed, thanks to his watering.
1992 would never have happened without the Stabroek News. By breaking the state monopoly on the press, he broke the hegemony and let the first shoots of freedom flow.
Later, he found himself and his paper in a battle for survival in a fight picked by the successors of those who had taken advantage of the free and fair elections to win time after time. It was a silly fight and one which ended with no winners.
David was good company; impish with the sense of mischief which drives all great journalists. Full of curiosity, too, right up to the last time we met in London in May.
I shall keep in my mind the image of ‘DEC’ (as he was called at school) with his closest friends playing snooker once a week in the Georgetown Club. Calm, elegant and a gentle man, David was a man of incredible erudition, too.
Read some of his editorials if you want to see the depth of his intellect. Read the letters page, which he turned into a nation forum, if a prolix one. The art of writing was not lost in the mores of dictatorship, as so many others had been crushed.
I shall miss David. Very much. His paper will miss him greatly. Guyanese journalism, of which he was a giant, will miss him. Guyana and the wider Caribbean will, too.
Farewell, old soldier of freedom. Pip!Pip! to you for the last time.
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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