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Opinions of Thursday, 8 February 2007

Columnist: Quaye, Rikard

Daily Guide, Blay's Irresponsibe Outbursts & CMA

The Daily Guide in its reaction to findings published in a press release by the Centre for Media Analysis (CMA) chose to run us down for comparisons made by the CMA, which we shall address in our own time. For us the CMA is simply a contract seeking NGO, which is out to pontificate on media content without any serious intent to help enrich media discourse. In any case, we are not amused at all that the CMA could ascribe such negative findings to us and even attempt a comparison with a pro NPP newspaper edited by the shameless Gina Blay, a dishonest and questionable character who openly defends drug barons, even as they languish in U.S. prison. We want to place on record that The New Democrat is compelled once again to descend into the journalistic gutter to slug it out with such moronic characters with stinking moral history dating back to their Secondary School days at OLA Girls, Ho and the University of Ghana , Legon.

In any case, what makes Gina Blay and her nit-wits think so highly of themselves? They have decided to maul our professional competence and question our professional integrity while extolling their own virtues and achievements in the field of journalism practice. They see nothing wrong with their corrupt government. Of course, they need not to, because they share in this corrupt largesse. They have to see everything cosy with the corrupt NPP government because it has brought about rapid transformations in their lives for being sycophantic and jaundiced in their reportage and for their around-the-clock demonization of Rawlings and other NDC leaders.

If the New Democrat were to publish a fraction of the scurrilous abuse and insults about President J.A. Kufuor as Gina Blay and her newspaper had done to Jerry Rawlings and other leading members in the NDC, the media landscape would have been in flames. Gina Blay and her ?kenkey? lawyer husband need to refresh their minds by taking new lessons in content analysis to determine which of the newspapers have been more reckless and abusive.

Gina Blay and her NPP-funded Daily Guide recently published unwholesome stories about former President Rawlings pleading for cash from a leader of a South American country. Her paper spiced the story with the Latin America country having abundant quantity of oil from which he derives so much money as well as that country being a hub of the illicit drug trade from which much is reaped. Can she and her newspaper substantiate these serious allegations against the former President? These are below the belt blows just in their opportunism to please the NPP, J.A. Kufuor and their source of these fabrications, National Security.

She and her newspaper claimed they have a mission. And of course, the New Democrat also has a mission. We are truly poles apart. While Gina Blay, her ?kenkey? lawyer husband and the Daily Guide are on a noble mission of denigrating Rawlings and the NDC, the New Democrat is out to rake the ills in the NPP and to expose the scandals of kick-backs, Hotel Kufuor, Amoateng?s cocaine saga, Anane?s Ghana Airways connection and Alexandra O?Brien among others which they (Daily Guide) defended to the hilt. We were all in this country when journalists have constituted themselves into NPP town-criers with Gina Blay and her like-minds as the choir leaders. Where were Gina Blay and other NPP journalists? mission when they threw journalistic decency to the vultures of Taviefe, for satanically publishing that Kwesi Pratt Jnr. had been bribed with $250,000?

This is the woman who claims to be the president of PRINPAG. Well, PRINPAG of yesterday was a solid association to which we all warm up to. However, Gina Blay?s occupation of the chair, by whatever means is killing the association if not already dead. Gina Blay and her newspaper talked of journalism ethics. What a paradox? She and her Daily Guide must have forgotten the true definition of ethics. It probably has to do with the rubbish they churn out about Rawlings ad infinitum. The more they use the pages of their newspaper to abuse Rawlings and the NDC it is the same way that we shall continue to spew out 'garbage' in our pages about Kufuor. It is the case of 'measure for measure' and there is nothing unethical about that. Jerry Rawlings like Kufuor is God's own creation with blood running through his veins. He was not cut from a tree but conceived and born like Gina Blay?s icon, Kufuor.

If Gina Blay and her newspaper are averse to criticism as they have demonstrated in their angry and emotional editorial response to the CMA findings, they are reminded of how others they constantly abuse also feel about their one-sided reportage and the rumour-sliced junk they publish. They misguidedly strayed into a minefield when they talked of newspaper circulation in their attempt at comparison with the so-called NDC newspapers. Who told Gina Blay and her Daily Guide that readers do not patronise papers considered to have NDC leanings? For the so-called managing editor of the Daily Guide, Gina Blay, we are not surprised at her assertions because having been obsessed with following J.A. Kufuor on his junketing circuit like a pit bull terrier dog, she has become gibberish resulting from her passion for the NPP. We can excuse her because apart from the per diem she collects on her travelling circuit with Kufuor, only God knows what other activities go on behind-the-scenes to please the powers-that-be to rake in more foreign currency.

Gina Blay, her 'kenkey' lawyer husband and their young flock of reporters? to state the least suffer from political myopia. No wonder they find nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with their own reportage. It is one thing being doled out free cash to litter the streets with a newspaper in a deliberate attempt to crowd out others from the market and it is another thing using resources from sales to publish. We are proud of our modest gains because we do not benefit from NPP largesse mostly drawn from the contingency fund for a destructive cause. Readers would do well to check the returns (unsold copies) of the newspapers and compare them to what is put out on the market.

We want to place on record that we were called into action by Gina Blay and her newspaper. We shall dish out the same ladle of the bitter potion they tried to force down our throat. This woman from Taviefe, near Ho, we are informed is nothing worth the aura she is unsuccessfully trying to build around herself. She has no moral or social clout. We promise to bring her past record into the public sphere very soon. Let the public not be deceived as if Gina Blay and her ilk at the Daily Guide were some giants in the media industry. She is just a humming bird, who is out to make dirty money by singing the praises of Kufuor and the NPP. This is the ?chop, chop era for her and her ?kenkey? lawyer husband. It is pathetic seeing the so-called husband, whose pretensions as an Nkrumahist is now being questioned. It is even more disgusting, seeing the couple follow Kufuor as if they want to lick his ?ass.

Let Gina Blay explained to the whole world why she is debarred from ever seeking employment in the corporate sector? Has is it got anything to do with her dismissal at the former Achimota Brewery Company? Let Gina Blay deny that she used to work as procurement officer at ABC? Let her deny setting up a proxy company with the husband? Let this new found member of the elite corps deny inflating prices of goods supplied through their proxy company to ABC from which they made a windfall? Let her open her mouth to deny that she was summarily dismissed for her unscrupulous behaviour? We shall expatiate on this in due course.

As for her 'kenkey' lawyer husband, the public has to be told of his tall-tale of the missing foreign money belonging to his client after the money was handed over to him in a court case he initiated on behalf of the client. Like Shakespeare's Tales this grand story put him in the category of I.C. Quaye. Freddie Blay's alibi that flood swept his residence clean and the hard currency carried away by the 'tidal wave' had placed him in poll position to beat I.C. Quaye to the title of who had suffered 'grave damage' when it comes to ?Tsunamis?. Of course Gina Blay?s husband has joined I.C. Quaye as the only two men whose certificates and foreign currencies were destroyed by floods in mysterious circumstances. They deserve a place in the Guinness Book of records.

When we referred to her hobnobbing husband as a ?kenkey? lawyer, we meant every bit of the description. We shall explain this assertion in detail when a more in-depth comment is published on the opportunistic brains behind the Daily Guide. Gina Blay is fully aware she and her husband owe their new found 'financial clout' to the NPP largesse. Today, she is opening her mouth wide, thanks to the NPP largesse that their dusty and cobweb infested and dilapidated offices have given way to a modern office complex.

We were all in this country when the Guide newspaper then edited by Kwaku Baako and owned by Freddie Blay and Gina Blay could not pay for damages imposed on it by the Courts when they libelled a former public official. At the time Gina Blay used to sit on her 'ass' in the then office and behave like the matriarch. She used to write an uninspiring and colourless column, an obvious display of lack of creativity and God's denial of that precious gift. Gina Blay used to jump at every turn presented for seminars and workshops to represent the newspaper denying the young and hardworking reporters the opportunity. In any case, she has nowhere else to go to because her sordid, dishonest and disgraceful past continues to haunt her. Did Kwaku Baako not resign from the paper in the process to set up the Crusading Guide out of anger and disagreement that 'kenkey' lawyer Freddie Blay could not put up appearance in Court to defend the paper?

Gina Blay and her humming birds of latter-day 'professionally competent' journalists and writers on the Daily Guide could not face the Courts then? Where from the new Dutch-courage? Of course from the manipulation of the Courts by her political masters to ensure they get favourable judgements so as not to disturb their sycophantic Al-Ahram coverage of the NPP government while heaping abuses and fabricating stories about Rawlings and the NDC. We promise to return to this issue and present the true character of this woman said to hail from Taviefe near Ho in the Volta Region to the public for their own judgement as to who is more irresponsible, uncouth and emotionally damaging to public discourse. To Gina Blay and her hot-heads on the Daily Guide, we assure them of our readiness to muddy the landscape and go the extra mile to release their stinking worms into the open for the consumption of all.

We shall be back with more dossier and we careless whose ox is gored. Be advised!



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