Media bedfellows at Christmas!

(In honour of the late SN columnist Arthur Allan Fenty, who authored a column on Fridays in this newspaper for 30 years, Stabroek News will be running some of his earliest contributions. This piece is taken from the December 8th, 2000 edition.)

Believe me, today should have been my editorapproved day off - probably for shopping but since I’m broke I decided to keep my nearly eight-year record intact.

And I just could not resist comment regarding the strange bedfellows of the local media coming out over the past weeks.

This season of goodwill towards all men certainly brings out the best (?) in even sworn enemies, it seems. Mind you, to me it is not at all any goodwill. It’s elections campaign time. Now, and for the first quarter of next year. It’s pure media politics. It’s just alliances of convenience, commerce and survival.

How else would you explain the loquacious ‘TV personality’ - how I dislike the cheapening of that description - being finally accepted by his peers after he had subjected them to such indecent public ridicule? At the earlier niche of opportunism, he had singled out one of them for personal reprimand that crossed the bounds of propriety, even for the cheap one-upmanship attempted. Oh well, political expediency probably demands kissing and making-up amongst the ‘brothers’. Guess what? One, it really isn’t my business and, two, it won’t last!

But I have to be curious too, about the other practical accommodation between two former fair opponents. The more aggressive protagonist just teamed up with his erstwhile critic - an occasional Guyanese who visits the land of his birth from time to time – to pose one big question. Will that last? The question probably will, but not the answers. Well as the new bedfellows and individuals find new homes, the icing on the local media Christmas cake came in the form of the resuscitation of a Guyana Press Association. Will that last? The least said.

Last Saturday’s Stabroek

Again, believe me: It’s not because 1 should have been off today that I’m quoting the under-mentioned. Without any modesty or conceit. 1 say that it has been established that this offering is very widely read by you and your friends abroad. I therefore found several items in last Saturday’s Stabroek News (SN Dec 2. 2000) extremely informative, provocative and worthy of further exposure here-in. So, in case you missed them.

From CRB Edwards: “What the Chief Magistrate was understood by all and sundry as doing, was telling that woman to go and prostitute herself. She burst into tears right there in open court. This is not the first instance in which this particular magistrate

has been totally disrespectful to people appearing before him, particularly women, in the most despicable manner.”

(Comment: No comment!)

Then seasoned observer W.P. George, in discussing objections to voters names in by-gone days, spoke of how a very real voter became really non-existent.“One such person was the jeweller, Basil Kowlessar from the East Coast of Demerara. So Basil went to the Mirror Newspaper with his ID card to show he existed. Well soon after, the kick down the door bandits visited Kowlessar and made him non-existent.”

(Comment: Can those days return?)

Regarding AIDS: “Men are truly the driving force behind this epidemic, when it comes to injecting drug-use the majority are men, but also in terms of homosexual and heterosexual transmission it is male behaviour that plays a dominant role,” Dr Peter Piot, the head of the UN agency leading the battle against the global epidemic, told Reuters.

Sub-Saharan Africa, with 25.3 million HIV/AIDS sufferers, is the epicenter of the epidemic. AIDSrelated diseases killed 2.4 million people in Africa this year - more than those killed by war, famine and flood combined.

Experts now fear the epidemic is heading East and that China and India with their huge populations will be most vulnerable.”

Finally, Attorney-at-Law Mohabir Anil Nandlall

wrote about contempt even as I wondered about libel: “Mr. Benschop, then aired the end of the show, released himself from whatever restraint he was exercising and stretched the meanings of the words audacious and impudent to their limits by publishing words to the effect that “Carl Singh (not justice) was not qualified to be a judge in the first place and was in bed with the politicians...”

Well, if the aforesaid does not constitute contempt in the manner and form described by the Lord Chief Justice in R.V Gray (above), then I dare say that contempt of Court does not exist in the jurisprudence of

Guyana.” (Comment: Far from being any legal contender, I say still, predominant motive... calculated’ or not; Lord Denning notwithstanding, once the `utterer’ gets away with those statements, the floodgates of character abuse and assassination will open much wider.) But ‘boat gone-a-falls already’. It’s campaign time and as I predicted it’s also to hell-with-any mediacode’. Never-the-less, great stuff Saturday Stabroek. They’ll criticize you but even they can’t `boycott’ high principle.

So long for now

1) As 1 write. I can’t know what transpired at yesterday’s (Presidential) political summit but the PNC certainly scored a one-upmanship point with their Stabroek full-page ad on Wednesday. It was so preemptive, some wondered why the attendance.

2) Assume that the 1997 voters list was inflated or ‘padded’ (an indelicate term). It would mean that the party – I mean entity – doing the ‘padding’ would have infiltrated the Doodnauth Singh Commission Nerve Centre. (We were or are truly blessed with superb electoral manipulative engineers - on both sides).

3) The present Commission, headed by another, more favoured Singh, is seeking the co-operation of all to ensure that its new list is near flawless. I trust that confidence is there. Those who wanted this Singh there should not embarrass him!

4) Watch out! The NDM,| NRP and PUP have joined forces. Keith for Prez!

5) The Christian PRP was on the JFA TV station on Sunday. The Reverend Leader was explaining the inspiration of Deuteronomy and Proverbs that informed its entry into the political arena. Which might lead to a political kingdom.

6) What? Don’t buy Christmas Blinds at certain stores? Naughty. Where then? (6b) Give the Vendors a| Christmas Treat. Let them vend on some street. (Not on the pave).

7) Check the list. Check it twice! Who’s been naughty? Who’s been nice!?

8) The long-term observers are watching!

9) I won’t be like some sports-writers. 1 won’t ask what the West Indies are doing with the fifteen ducks

produced in the first two Tests. I will not do it!

10) This is Australia’s turn. Even Captain Steve Waugh’s buttock problem couldn’t stop him from savouring the triumph.