Wes­ley Gib­bings

There were sad and som­bre mo­ments, but the fu­ner­al ser­vice for Guyana-born Caribbean jour­nal­ist Rick­ey Singh in Bar­ba­dos on Ju­ly 16 was any­thing but dark and colour­less.

Such were the anec­dotes and emo­tions from friends, fam­i­ly mem­bers, and col­leagues of the enig­mat­ic pro­fes­sion­al who con­front­ed re­gion­al politi­cians un­afraid of met­ing out re­venge and cru­el pun­ish­ment.

Among the ac­counts re­peat­ed by two close friends and for­mer col­leagues was a 1970s in­ci­dent in­volv­ing Singh and then Fi­nance Min­is­ter of Guyana, Desmond Hoyte - who went on to be­come Pres­i­dent of the coun­try in 1985 when long­stand­ing Pres­i­dent Forbes Burn­ham died in of­fice.

The sto­ry goes that Singh had been grilling Hoyte on some is­sue or the oth­er. When Hoyte ran out of pa­tience, he land­ed a sting­ing slap to the re­porter’s face.

Guyana-born An­tiguan diplo­mat Ronald Sanders said in a pub­lished pre­am­ble to his trib­ute at the ser­vice: “The slap did not seal his lips - it mag­ni­fied his mes­sage. It un­veiled the frag­ile ve­neer of pow­er im­per­vi­ous to prin­ci­ple and show­cased the un­yield­ing spir­it of a jour­nal­ist who re­fused to bow.”

Life­long jour­nal­is­tic friend and con­fi­dant, Hu­bert Williams, who worked with Singh at the Guyana Graph­ic in the 1970s and was like­wise ex­iled un­der threat, added to the sto­ry of the slap. He re­lat­ed that fol­low­ing the at­tack, all 5 feet 4 inch­es of the lay preach­er/jour­nal­ist im­me­di­ate­ly lunged for­ward at the tall and phys­i­cal­ly stur­dy Hoyte, grab­bing him by the throat.

Some­time lat­er when in­ter­ro­gat­ed by Williams, the hap­less se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer as­signed to pro­tect Hoyte at the time was asked why he did not step in to de­fend his boss. The guard, ac­cord­ing to Williams, said Singh did what he had him­self of­ten con­tem­plat­ed.

In a bar ses­sion that fol­lowed the fu­ner­al ser­vice - com­pris­ing Bar­ba­di­an jour­nal­ists Julius Git­tens, Pe­ter Thorne and Wayne Lewis, and in­clud­ing Bert Wilkin­son from Guyana, Pe­ter Richards based in T&T, Jacque­line Charles of the Mi­a­mi Her­ald, and this writer - Wilkin­son of­fered an­oth­er (im­prob­a­ble) ver­sion of the “slap” sto­ry that in­clud­ed word of a gun be­ing slammed on a desk.

It was nev­er­the­less gen­er­al­ly agreed that Caribbean jour­nal­ism lore would be in­com­plete with­out men­tion of that Rick­ey Singh en­counter. “Who,” Sanders asked the Peo­ple’s Cathe­dral con­gre­ga­tion on Ju­ly 16, “was harmed by that slap? – The per­pe­tra­tor and po­lit­i­cal pow­er, or the vic­tim and the right of free speech?”

Lat­er when the re­gion­al jour­nal­ists as­sem­bled on the is­land’s south coast at the in­vi­ta­tion of Singh’s daugh­ters Don­na Ram­sam­my and Wendy Singh-Lech­n­er, Saint Lu­cian Earl Bous­quet, who had paid pub­lic trib­ute at the church, and vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Andy John­son of T&T re­count­ed nu­mer­ous oth­er mem­o­rable en­coun­ters.

John­son and Bous­quet were close fol­low­ers of Singh dur­ing his lead­er­ship of the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Me­dia Work­ers (CAM­WORK). Bous­quet al­so cred­it­ed Singh with en­cour­ag­ing him to en­ter the field of jour­nal­ism – now 49 years ago – and cit­ed their work to en­cour­age the de­vel­op­ment of me­dia as­so­ci­a­tions across the Caribbean.

John­son was the first Pres­i­dent of the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (MATT) in 1986 which be­came aligned to the re­gion­al group­ing of jour­nal­ists es­tab­lished in Ja­maica that very year. CAM­WORK was lat­er suc­ceed­ed in 2001 by the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Me­di­a­Work­ers (ACM).

The ser­vice was at­tend­ed by se­nior me­dia op­er­a­tives such as for­mer Bar­ba­dos Na­tion Ex­ec­u­tive Ed­i­tor, Rox­anne Gibbs-Branck­er, who lent sup­port to Singh fol­low­ing re­vo­ca­tion of his work per­mit by late Prime Min­is­ter Tom Adams on ac­count of his re­port­ing on the 1983 US in­va­sion of Grena­da.

Caribbean Broad­cast­ing Union (CBU) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, So­nia Gill, was al­so in at­ten­dance. So was In­ter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Hu­man Rights mem­ber, Rober­ta Clarke, and hus­band at­tor­ney Dou­glas Mendes.

For­mer Guyanese diplo­mat and for­mer Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the African, Caribbean and Pa­cif­ic (ACP) Group of States, Dr P.I. Gomes joined in pay­ing trib­ute to Singh dur­ing the church ser­vice.

The ac­co­lades com­ple­ment­ed nu­mer­ous oth­er ho­n­ours paid to the late, high­ly dec­o­rat­ed Caribbean re­gion­al­ist, jour­nal­ist, and church­man who died on Ju­ly 5 at the age of 88.