Starting in November-December 1986 in the early stages of the Hoyte liberalistion, opposed by many in his party, we had at the outset two main editorial themes, first and foremost free and fair elections and a return to democracy, secondly, the opening up of the economy. State capitalism had been an unmitigated disaster and it was clear a new course was needed. President Hoyte adopted such a course in his Economic Recovery Programme announced in 1989.

The return to a free press after the dark years of state monopoly of the media was not without its strains and our editor-in-chief had the dubious honour of featuring first in the roll call of the Putagee mafia. But the free press has been subjected to the most vigorous and vicious criticism from politicians and others in democracies everywhere for as long as it has existed and will continue to be while it is doing its job. The present government elected in a fair election in 1992 has, not surprisingly, kept up the tradition.

Criticism is all well and good. But in a democratic society there must be limits. It is widely agreed that the success of young democracies in solving their problems will parly depend on the ability of their citizens to discuss them, and write about them, freely and openly and without fear. In an effort to find ways to protect this freedom the Inter American Press Association organised a conference at Chapultepec in Mexico in 1994. There the Declaration of Chapultepec was written and adopted. It has since been signed by many presidents in the region. These principles are reproduced on this page.

The definition of press freedom is an evolutionary process. In an economy that is still about sixty per cent state owned the political use of state advertising is a clear abuse of press freedom and directly offends the principles in the Declaration of Chapultepec (6 and 7) and our own constitution. It was practiced by the previous government and criticised by the then opposition. It is now being practised by this government. It is a misuse of taxpayers funds which are being used to prop up the newspaper affiliated to the ruling party. It also illustrates some of the distortions caused by state ownership of part of the media

By 1994 the old press we had acquired with great difficulty, given the foreign exchange constraints, in 1987 was giving up the ghost. We had no alternative but to buy fresh equipment. We then faced the dilemma faced by all manufacturers here which is the prohibitive cost of equiprnent given the rate of exchange and the difficulty of borrowing at high interest rates. A modest remanufactured press and a new factory wiped out all our reserves and left us heavily in debt, a position we share with other manufacturers. To compound the problem, newsprint prices escalated last year putting newspapers everywhere under pressure. Hence our recent price increase.