The Attorney General Chambers walks a fine line

May 20, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Of all the places in Guyana, the Attorney General Chambers should know better. We believe that its complement of legal minds knows better, but that there was a momentary rush of blood to the agency’s head leading it to make a misstep (“AG Chambers issues veiled threat to cut State ads from Kaieteur News” -KN May 14). It is a fine line that the people at the AG Chambers walk, greater care should be exercised with how words are deployed. There is the risk of all manner of interpretations from errant words and menacing postures, most of which would not accrue to the plus side of the ledger for the AG Chambers.
The watchers at the AG Chambers were clearly distressed that KN carried a sharp article about the cost of a new parking shed, and made an unflattering comparison. The response from the Chambers came last Thursday and it was loaded: “This must constitute one of the worst expressions of journalism, so frequently evident on the pages of this newspaper. If the Ministry is to stop publishing advertisements in this newspaper, an attack on press freedom would be the cry!”

Is this a threat, or is this a threat! Why even go there, stir that hornet’s nest, reawaken that sleeping dog that had bit deeply into sections of the media found too loud, too frank, for their own good? We thought that there ought to have been better sense, calmer spirits, more expansive visions of what the ideals of democracy are all about. We are sure that the boss at Carmichael Street knows, but we extend a helping hand, just in case. After all, people have a tendency to forget important things in the pressure of a thousand matters to handle.
As we see it, the press has its role, and must persist against the odds, even when the going is rough, when feathers are ruffled, or when fearsome weapons are unsheathed. Simply put, we see our role as presenting the truth, once the circumstances fit. This being Guyana, and given the history of the ad threat so airily bandied about, what came out of the AG Chambers is not something to be taken lightly, something said in jest.
We do not believe that it was a jest, or a slip of the tongue, but a deliberate ploy to stop us in our tracks, and arrest our attention by reading an equivalent of the riot act to us. We should be cowed, but we assure one and all that we are not, for what we are doing is fulfilling our professional responsibilities, as we interpret them. Trying to send a message and arrest our attention is one thing, arresting the work of this publication is another and a Pandora Box of its own. We still stand fast, as we have always done, come hellfire or fire from any other source, as our history can attest.
Again, we regret that the people in the AG Chambers found it necessary to come out with their lance and battle axe at the ready. Nobody desires such a deterioration in relations, which is where we believe that the Hon. Attorney General himself stands. He needs to raise a cautioning hand to his war column, and order it to deescalate and stand down.
It is not good for the national image (which we are positive that the AG knows) that a time bomb like this was favoured to warn that retribution could be swift in efforts to get even. This is not marching in lockstep with Guyana’s new oil era, but harps back to a rougher, tougher, brasher environment. It was of such that even the Vice President himself (during his time as Opposition leader) did so grudgingly acknowledged, and which was a bad lapse originating from a poor judgment call.
We think that this is what is happening here in this one-sided spat (the Chambers) over a parking shed, as unbelievable as it sounds. Government people must not be so thin-skinned, so easily ready with the hinted retaliatory. That has its own people, those who like doing so, and those who fear being on the receiving side. We have no ambitions at either.

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