Latest update April 23rd, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 04, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
Persons who assisted APNU-AFC during the 2015 elections campaign have been rewarded with ‘honorific’ appointments. A businessman was appointed as Ministerial Advisor of Business. Supporters of the AFC were handed titles as Advisors of Diaspora Affairs. APNU followed the AFC lead and made similar appointments.
If you ask the average man what they thought was responsible the most of the change in government in May of 2015, they will tell you that it was Kaieteur News which made the greatest contribution. Kaieteur News was responsible for exposing the corruption, nepotism and cronyism under the former regime and as a result Guyanese saw the truth about the PPPC government and voted for change.
Kaieteur News did not set out to create regime change. It did what it has been doing since its formation, exposing the wrongdoing it the society. The people of this country know that it was Kaieteur News and especially Glenn Lall which were responsible for exposing the dirtiness of the PPP.
For exposing the wrongs in our society and for bringing the truth to the Guyanese people, Kaieteur News and its Publisher have paid a huge price. On August 8, 2006, six Kaieteur News employees were placed to lie on the floor of the newspaper’s printing department and they were shot in their heads. All six died.
After that attack, the publisher of Kaieteur News increased the security of his staff. He increased their protection as well as that of his own security. But he did not relent in his reporting on the wrongdoings in the country. The PPP did not like that. As a result, political instructions were given to the former Commissioner of the Guyana Police Force to take away the security weapons which were used as protection for the staff of this newspaper. No reason was given but Kaieteur News found out that the instruction came from high up, very high up in the government.
Later, when Kaieteur News began to expose the rotten deals of the PPP and ran a series entitled the ‘Heist of Guyana’, the PPP moved to silence him. The foreign embassies in Guyana were advised about a plot to hurt Lall. He was later placed on trumped up charges as part of the political victimization against his company. A recording surfaced about what could happen to the newspaper.
The new APNU+AFC government has given out ‘honorific’ awards to persons who supported the coalition in its quest for power. They have honoured those who they said helped them. One letter writer has however pointed out that it is not just the prominent persons who helped the coalition who should be honoured but also the ordinary citizen.
Kaieteur News and its publisher were not looking for any honorific appointments. It however wanted the wrong that was done against this newspaper to be put right. It desired to see the order for the seizure of the weapons used to protect the staff to be rescinded.
Do you know what Lall told his staff this week at a meeting? He told them that despite speaking on two occasions to one Minister and despite speaking on one occasion to another, nothing has been done. The new coalition government cannot as yet, ten months since it came to power, find the time to return the weapons that were used for the security of the staff of Kaieteur News and which were seized by Henry Greene. But they found the time to make someone an Advisor on Business.
The Guyanese public must judge for themselves the persons to whom the new government is handing out honorific awards. It must ask itself why the protection of the staff of this newspaper has been treated as a secondary issue.
This newspaper will not compromise what it stands for. It exposed wrongdoing under the PPP and it will do the same for the new government. There are no sacred cows. Only the people are sacred and they have a right to know the facts.
The public is entitled to know what is going on in Guyana. It is entitled to know about the associations of the new rulers of Guyana. It deserves to know the persons who were given honorific appointments. It deserves to know about the travel of government officials and who they took on those trips.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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