Broken promises to pass broadcast and Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation shows the administration’s lack of credibility, said Alliance For Change (AFC) Chairman Khemraj Ramjattan as the party picketed outside Parliament yesterday over government’s failure to act on these issues.
“We rather suspect that the government wants to maintain the control over information. It wants to drive fear in those that will provide information like they did with [sacked Office of the President worker] Marcelle Joseph recently and they’re doing with a couple of other persons and that is why they don’t want to ‘statutise’ the rights to inform and public servants have the right to inform people who want questions answered,” Ramjattan said.
About 15 AFC members and supporters held placards and stood outside the barriers protecting the Public Buildings under the watchful eyes of police before yesterday’s sitting of the National Assembly. The protesters also called attention to events surrounding the bauxite industry.
Ramjattan recalled that two deadlines set by the government to have the legislation brought to the House have passed with no explanation from leader of the government’s business Prime Minister Samuel Hinds.
The AFC has drafted broadcast and FOI legislation and laid these in parliament.
Ramjattan recalled that he drafted the broadcast legislation using the Commonwealth model and also the recommendations of the committee that late PNCR leader Desmond Hoyte and President Bharrat Jagdeo had set up to examine the issue. He said that AFC leader Raphael Trotman had drafted the FOI bill out of a model from India with a lot of expertise from the Commonwealth. He recalled that the PPP had said that they were not going to use the bills drafted by the AFC and was going to wait until their draftsman provided theirs. Noting the passed deadlines, Ramjattan said that “it’s wasting time in relation to these two issues being in parliament and that’s why we’re outside here making our expressions felt through our protest demonstration.”
‘Multi-crisis’
in Linden
According to Ramjattan, Lindeners have requested the picketing exercise with there being a “multi-crisis” in the Region Ten mining community. He said that this related to the situation with bauxite, with labour laws being breached and the Lindeners having access only to one television and radio station, both run by the state-owned NCN.
The Lindeners, Ramjattan said, want other television stations to be able to extend their signals to the community as well as radio licences granted to entrepreneurs.
He pointed to the court case where Chief Justice Ian Chang said that all applications for television and radio licences for the community be dealt with forthwith and not at the convenience of the administration.
Chang also ruled that government cannot penalise the people of the mining town and freeze applications for wider broadcast access until it reaches a political consensus with the main opposition party on broadcast legislation. “We don’t know what else we can do. We have tabled the legislation for this thing. We have tabled the legislation for FOI and broadcasting. The Lindeners went to court and they got an award.
They got judgment. Judgments ought now to be enforced,” Ramjattan said.
He said that the government is breaching the court’s order. “The government is a law breaker and they can easily pass the legislation because it is in accord with the highest levels of the models and the precedents all across the Caribbean,” he said. Ramjattan, the AFC Presidential Candidate, said that they would like to have the legislation passed as early as possible.
He said that the protest is also to “let the public also become aware that the government is lying to us when it makes deadlines and then breaches those deadlines, that there is absolutely no credibility and integrity anymore in the government.” He said that Hinds has not explained why the latest deadline—January—was missed and the party hoped that the demonstration might elicit an explanation. Ramjattan said that the AFC will be embarking on other protests as other relevant issues come to the fore.
Meanwhile, AFC Regional Councillor in Linden Gerald Whittington said that they are prepared to come out every time there is a parliamentary session and protest.
“Every time you turn on your TV, it’s NCN in front of you unlike the other regions in Guyana. That’s what we have to contend with every day for the past 19 years and I hope the government will do something and grant us our wishes to (grant) licences [to entrepreneurs who would like to open TV and radio stations in Linden],” he said. “They are depriving us of that freedom to switching yuh TV to another station,” he added.
He said that elections are approaching and only Georgetown and government are on the Linden station with no other choices. “If you say you want democracy, well let the people of Linden have choices,” he said. “We’re gonna fight…until we get the Bill passed,” Judith Rogers, another Lindener and AFC member added.
