Persona non grata at the Chronicle

Dear Editor,
Well it finally appears that the Guyana Chronicle has ceased publishing my letters in the Letters to the Editor columns.

I say this because over the past couple of weeks, I have sent numerous letters to the press for publication, to which none, to date has been published.
This came as no surprise to me because I was expecting some sort of directive from higher authority in the form of an instruction to block the publication of all my letters, whether or not they were critical of the government.

Mosquito-invasion

This is a new low of the Guyana Chronicle.
The letter columns of any newspaper, as I’ve always said, should be the true unfiltered voice of the people in any given geographic area, no strings attached.
Well, the Chronicle over the years has employed the tactic of “ghost letter writers” replying to any criticisms of other writers whose critical letters appear in other newspapers.
The other (privately-owned) daily newspapers, of course, do not play this dirty game that the Chronicle is playing. Those papers publish letters that are both complimentary and critical of the government.
The Chronicle has become the sole mouthpiece of the government of the day—and no other voice shall be tolerated. In all my years of expressing ideas in these columns, I have never seen a letter critical of the government in the Guyana Chronicle! The paper’s website now has a feature whereby readers on the internet can peruse articles and letters and leave their comments. I tried the thing and tried posting a comment. Do you know that no comments are ever published especially if that comment is critical? Whenever I pen essays which may be critical of the government, I still send them to the Chronicle for publication even though I know I would be wasting my time. Over the past couple of days there has been a letter in every single edition of the Chronicle penned by Mr Kwame McCoy. His diatribes focus on the publisher of Kaieteur News and the letters from Mr McCoy seem to be flowing non- stop in the spaces of the Guyana Chronicle. The squabble is getting more personal and unethical. It should stop.
The Chronicle has become a newspaper characterized by adhering to instructions from higher calling, to proffer the agenda of the current administration. I know I was one of the Chronicle’s last hold-outs. They have published my letters for years now, and now it appears that they cannot take the heat from Suseran’s pen anymore.
Well, I have news for everyone: my views will still be seen, read and heard in full black and white in the other newspapers.
The Chronicle has now officially become the paper whose letter columns are packed with all sorts of crazy names, nom de plumes and questionable pseudonyms.
A four-year-old can think up better and more realistic names. Who buys or read the Chronicle anyway? I only read the online edition to get a few ‘jokes’ now and again.
Leon Jameson Suseran