Press releases
Editorial
On the night of Wednesday, June 30, President Jagan was admitted to the intensive care unit of the St Joseph's Mercy Hospital. By early the following morning the grapevine was in full swing and a local, privately owned television station was broadcasting a lurid account of her state of health. Nothing, of course, was heard from the Government via the Guyana Information Services (GIS) until after the announcement had appeared on the above-mentioned TV station. Somewhat belatedly, an official release informed the curious public that the President had been admitted to the Mercy Hospital suffering from "ill-defined and persistent body pains." In which part of her body these mysterious pains were located was simply not stated, and citizens were left to imagine that she was racked with pain all over. "The origin of these pains," the statement continued magisterially, "has not been clearly established and Her Excellency has remained under intense evaluation and observation." The electorate was only left to surmise that doctors had not determined the source of this generalized pain, and that therefore the President might indeed be seriously ill. In a rare flurry of communication on such a taboo subject, GIS told Guyanese in a second release in the evening that "Her [the President's] initial complaints have resolved significantly and she is resting quietly." This was, of course, a relief to know, but the public was still in the dark as to what her "initial complaints" had actually been. On Friday morning, both national newspapers quoting 'sources', mentioned the word 'angina,' a diagnosis which did not bear too obvious a relationship with the first Government press release. Significantly, the GIS has not contradicted the angina statements as yet. It would seem that President Jagan's indisposition was, on this occasion, none too serious, although the usual cloak of secrecy coupled with the enigmatic official press releases left a lingering suspicion in some minds that everything was not what it appeared. This clandestine approach also allowed leeway for some scurrilous accounts of Mrs Jagan's health to be peddled around by those who clearly had lost all sense of dignity and propriety. If the President was not too seriously ill, the Government had nothing to lose by being frank with the people. As a matter of fact, they had nothing to lose even if she had been seriously ill. The health status of a head of state in a democracy is not a private matter; it is a public matter. It has clear constitutional implications, and on these grounds alone the public has a right to know. They do not have to be told every minute detail, but they should be given an accurate general diagnosis. The Government, it would seem, still believes that in this modern era it can keep information, such as the President's admission to hospital, a secret. It can't. It still believes, apparently, that it can get away with nonsensical press releases about a head of state's health. It can't. It still believes, it appears, that if it issues dissembling statements, its word will still be trusted by the people thereafter. It won't. We have been down this road before, and one might have thought that the administration would not have repeated the mistakes of the last occasion. How long will it be before it discovers that it is living in the information era?
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