Do Christians in Guyana have to boycott the Guyana Chronicle, or its Editor Mark Ramotar, to be equally heard on issues raised byPastor Daniel Singh?

Dear Editor,

Under our noses, a scandalous, sinister, cutthroat, and definitely anti-Christian agenda is being played out in the pages of Guyana ’s state-owned print media. What are the possible political implications, especially for Christians?

Do Christians in Guyana have to boycott the Guyana Chronicle, or its Editor Mark Ramotar, to be equally heard on the issues that Pastor Daniel Singh raises? To be afforded as much column-inch space as Gossai, Suseran and DeFreitas?

The latest insertions in this six-week old debacle are to be found in the GC's letter-columns of the 20th June. There are two such calumnies.

In a letter captioned “The Authenticity of Singh’s Credentials is being Questioned” one “Arnold Chance” makes the astonishingly perverse statement: “Most importantly, I find it very strange that not one single evangelical in Guyana has written to testify on Daniel Singh’s behalf.”

Nothing could be further from the truth … the truth being that the Guyana Chronicle (under a seemingly new and absurdly activist editorial policy) has deliberately NOT printed letters in support of Pastor Daniel Singh.

We had responded quickly (copied twice to the Guyana Chronicle) to Justin DeFreitas’ previous attack on Pastor Singh with the online article “Ida: Missing Link … or humongous Hoax?” (
http://rogerwilli.blogspot.com/2009/06/ida-missing-link-or-humongous-hoax.html ) . This letter was never published.

A similar letter by DeFreitas three days later, published in the Guyana Chronicle of June 9th under the caption “The Pastor Must Answer the Questions” was responded to with the online article “Christians in Guyana Should Defend Pastor Daniel Singh, and Ask Kaieteur News, Guyana Chronicle to be Fair!" ( http://rogerwilli.blogspot.com/2009/06/christians-in-guyana-should-defend.html ) . This letter was also not published!

I repeat: Do Christians in Guyana have to boycott the Guyana Chronicle, or its Editor Mark Ramotar, to be equally heard on the issues that Pastor Daniel Singh raises?

Ramotar will find that the intellectual misadventure in pushing an anti-Christian agenda, or his nonchalant unprofessionalism, should have long found its way out of editorial policy at the Guyana Chronicle. His failure to accommodate an opposing view belongs to a not-so-distant era that we thought we had effectively surmounted.

Not to be outdone, one “P.I. Peters” in the same GC edition on June 20th ( “The Hindu Faith Treats Evolution As Science As A Norm”) tries to make an altogether tragic connection between an argument initiated by the “Missing Link” hoax that Ida’s flawed science represented and Singh’s “ancestral Hindu faith”. There is a wholly offensive stench to this latest development, and it further aggravates a no less offensive personal attack against Pastor Singh’s Christian outlook. We should waste no time in addressing … and dismissing … it. This will inform the contents of another letter.

It is ironic that GC’s Editor finally “allowed”, in that same edition, a plaintive and neutral defence of Pastor Daniel Singh sandwiched between “Chance’s” and “Peters’” efforts at deception. The defence, authored by “Ann Singh” is dutifully captioned “Daniel Singh is a Real Person”. The Editor’s debacle is complete. The viability of a chimera, a hoax called “Ida the Missing Link” is no longer the issue, only whether Ida’s critic Pastor Daniel Singh is “real”. Frankly, this effort at journalistic sleight-of-hand demeans the Guyana Chronicle. Repeating the letter in the GC of June 22nd fools no-one.

So we must now ask: Is the Guyana Chronicle a real newspaper? Or has it now chosen to define itself, its current Editor, and its content, by the sordidness of rank editorial unprofessionalism and a barely-concealed anti-Christian bias?

Yours faithfully
Roger Williams
June 21, 2009