Aircraft body blasts KN over ‘reckless’ article on Gouveia

The Aircraft Owners Association of Guyana (AOAG) has joined the growing condemnation of a Kaieteur News article that made sweeping allegations against leading private sector operatives in Guyana.
The AOAG in a statement said it was deeply concerned and completely dismayed at the anonymous article which appeared in the Kaieteur News on Sunday, February 24, under the headline “Muse or Amuse….Sold!!!”

In the article, Captain Gerry Gouveia was subjected to the most appalling, false, and defamatory accusations which have no basis in truth, the association said. The body added that the article also made a wholly unjustified attack on the businessmen of the private sector and labels the Guyanese private sector the “worst in the world”.
“The Aircraft Owners Association of Guyana takes strong exception to this entirely irresponsible article and is truly surprised that the Kaieteur News has allowed its publication. The AOAG wishes to remind the Kaieteur News that Captain Gouveia has served with distinction as a former army officer with the GDF Air Command. He has served his country unselfishly for many years, often, to our knowledge, putting his life on the line in the interest of Guyana and the Guyanese people.”
The body said Gouveia is a long-standing member of the AOAG, and has continued to play a non-partisan and critical role in representing the association in its relations with the government, on many occasions, on matters on which the association has disagreed with the government.
“In his capacity as one of the leading and most informed aviators in Guyana, Captain Gouveia has, without reservation, supported other members of the aviation community at all times over the last 15 years. Besides the service he has given to the AOAG, he has also provided through his airline, RAL [Roraima Airways Limited], the main “med-evacuation” of sick and injured Guyanese from all over our hinterland, especially at night,” the association noted.
It added that Gouveia has voluntarily given his professional knowledge and time to serving civil society, including as a previous president of the Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana (THAG) for some five years, the Georgetown chamber of commerce for two years, as chairman of the Private Sector Commission (PSC), as a director of the board for Ogle Airport Inc and is currently the chairman of the PSC’s governance and security committee.
“If as a Guyanese newspaper, we persistently try to bring down those among our society that serve our country and its people, then, perhaps, we should consider ourselves the worst newspaper society in the world,” the AOAG said.
Not a jot of evidence
Only last week, the PSC had also condemned in the strongest possible manner the KN article. The allegations, the PSC said, are completely devoid of truth and have absolutely no foundation in fact and none are offered to sustain the allegations in the article.
“The Private Sector Commission holds the publisher and editorial management of the Kaieteur News and author of the article directly responsible for the publication of this sordid and malicious scandal mongering in a newspaper which claims to be a national newspaper and which demands the right to press freedom,” the PSC said in a statement.
It added that the allegations in the article are made without a scintilla of evidence and attacks the moral character, professional integrity, and good name of the persons named in the article. Much worse, it accuses them of corrupt and criminal behaviour and, by inference, the commission and the entire private sector along with them.
“The disgraceful publication of this rubbish displays the worst form of gutter journalism and completely demeans the profession of journalism in Guyana. It is this kind of publication which, in fact, is calculated to invite the suppression of press freedom and which denigrates everything that a free press is founded on and stands for,” the commission said.