No one who has been following the scrapping between the government and the opposition political parties on the matter of campaign access to NCN can pretend to be surprised by the fact that the “highly anticipated” live presidential debate did not come off anyway. The truth is that the event was never on, anyway. Long before the debate was due one of the contenders for the presidency had made it clear that he had no intention of touching it with a ten-foot pole. Another official of another of the opposition parties was heard saying that his own presidential candidate had better things to do.
It appears that the would-be Presidents were simply terrified of being set-up by NCN which, after all, has been no friend to the opposition parties during the elections campaign. An APNU supporter has been expressing the view that the opposition parties have one campaign ad aired for every four allowed the PPP/C. That might just be a function of the fact that the PPP/C can afford to pay for four times the amount of ads that the combined opposition can pay for.
Mind you the word out there is that the ruling party is not altogether sorry that the debate has been called off since, for all the advantages which the state media would have offered, they were more than a little apprehensive about fielding their own candidate. Somebody at Freedom House actually suggested that President Jagdeo was being put through a course in ventriloquism just in case the debate came off.
After none of the candidates bat an eyelid on the NCN presidential debate TV Programme Manager Martin Goolsarran got on a high horse and issued a letter lecturing the opposition candidates for not showing up. NCN, Goolsarran trumpeted, is “a national television station funded by the taxpayers of Guyana with a specific mandate at elections time to provide fair and equitable access to all contesting political parties, we find your actions totally unacceptable.”
For heaven’s sake, Mr. Goolsarran! Spare us the sanctimonious nonsense! Is it only at this eleventh hour that it occurs to you that NCN is a “national television station funded by the taxpayers.” Did you not know, three or four months ago that NCN has “a specific mandate at elections time to provide fair and equitable access to all contesting political parties?” Are you aware that the opposition political parties have been saying pretty much the same thing in different ways for months now?”
