There's a let­ter by Vic­tor Charles pub­lished on page 25 of yes­ter­day's Guardian news­pa­per which I sup­port. The let­ter is head­lined Free­dom of as­so­ci­a­tion fits with free­dom of ex­pres­sion. Ini­tial­ly, I thought it was some mix­up by the Guardian, be­cause stuck in the mid­dle of Vic­tor Charles' let­ter is a large pho­to of a beam­ing Max­ie Cuffie with his name un­der­neath.

I took me a while to re­alise the pic­ture was placed there be­cause, on the right side of Charles' let­ter, there is a col­umn cap­tioned "Sun­day Guardian colum­nist Max­ie Cuffie re­sponds" which, as the name im­plies, turns out to be Max­ie Cuffie's re­sponse to what Vic­tor Charles wrote.

Now, I am no paid blog­ger (or colum­nist) and con­sid­er my­self to be neu­tral. I am, how­ev­er, very con­cerned about the ev­i­dent tit-for-tat Mick­ey Mouse game be­tween new­ly-hired colum­nist, Max­ie Cuffie, and sup­port­ers of the present gov­ern­ment.

I agree with Mr Cuffie that his po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion with the PNM should not be a bar to his be­ing a colum­nist.

I dis­agree how­ev­er with his com­par­i­son of Clevon Raphael (who ap­par­ent­ly worked for a while for the present gov­ern­ment) as Mr Raphael sim­ply in­ter­views pub­lic ser­vants and re­gur­gi­tates their replies, whilst Mr Cuffie is a colum­nist es­pous­ing his own views. There's a big dif­fer­ence be­tween the two. There's a big dif­fer­ence in the role and func­tion of both gen­tle­men.

I must con­fess my dis­com­fort with the man­ner in which Mr Cuffie, a colum­nist in the Guardian news­pa­per, does not arise from the ground of his po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion, rather from the fact that for a long while (un­til very re­cent­ly) he was gain­ful­ly em­ployed as the ed­i­tor of a tabloid news­pa­per (TNT Mir­ror) that has con­sis­tent­ly scan­dalised and ma­ligned many pub­lic fig­ures, in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment min­is­ters. That tabloid has been used as a dirty po­lit­i­cal weapon against the present gov­ern­ment.

I do not know what the Guardian's pol­i­cy is on hir­ing peo­ple who come from oth­er me­dia hous­es with such his­to­ry, but, to me, it cer­tain­ly seems to be with­out prece­dent. Among oth­er things, it's in clear con­flict with the lofty ideals on which the Guardian is found­ed and cre­ates fer­tile ground for al­le­ga­tions of po­lit­i­cal bias.

Fur­ther­more, lest it be for­got­ten, just be­fore the last gen­er­al elec­tion Mr Cuffie was named as a key fig­ure in the covert at­tempt to fa­cil­i­tate a British jour­nal­ist, An­drew Jen­nings, in one of the lat­ter's many at­tempts to dis­cred­it Jack Warn­er, who is now the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter. As a re­sult, I can­not but feel that hav­ing Max­ie Cuffie as colum­nist in a news­pa­per like the Guardian news­pa­per is a ret­ro­grade step, since it does not en­cour­age the Guardian's ef­fort to re­turn to its hal­cy­on days.

Lance Edi­son Tardieu

Point Cumana, Trinidad

Ed­i­tor's note:?

Mr Tardieu is mis­tak­en. In fact, in ad­di­tion to his in­ter­views for the Sun­day Guardian, Clevon Raphael writes a reg­u­lar week­ly opin­ion col­umn for the T&T?Guardian. His col­umn for this week ap­pears on page 30.