With the passage of broadcast legislation, government will now review applications for radio licences but will not issue any before elections, President Bharrat Jagdeo said yesterday.
Former television station proprietor Anthony Vieira had taken the government to court over radio licences and the court directed the government to consider all the applications received at the time. “I will fulfil the order of the court by reviewing all of the applications that are before us to see if they have any merit and we can issue licences. And if we’ll issue licences, then we are not gonna allow them to become operational until after the elections. So there is no charge that it’s done for electoral purposes. So this allows us to fulfil the court order,” Jagdeo said during a media briefing at the International Conference Centre at Liliendaal yesterday.
Asked why the government went ahead with the Broadcasting Bill without seeking consensus and consulting with stakeholders, the President said that the draft was “dusted off from 16 years ago.” He said that one of the reasons for the “cowboy land” in media today is because the administration never pursued broadcast legislation to the end. He said that in the last election, the administration said broadcast legislation and a freedom of information act will be passed and both are being done. Jagdeo said that he was pleased to see that the Alliance For Change supported the bill. “You’ll never have on any bill, unanimous views,” he said. “But this allows us to regulate the media in a fairer way, in a more transparent way. Everyone will be aware of the laws,” he added.
The President said that when the matter was taken to court, “I made it clear that we were not going to deal with this matter unless we had broadcast legislation in place.” When the court made its ruling, he said, a notice was placed in the newspaper, that no more applications were being taken. But they were obligated to look at the 55 or so applications that had already been received for radio, Jagdeo said.
“So now that the broadcast legislation is passed, I can then go and fulfil the court ruling and review those applications and probably issue licences to some broadcasting houses for radio. But one thing I will not do, I will not allow them to operate before the elections because if we do, then you’re gonna hear that it’s the PPP trying to get some advantage to the elections,” he added.
