Since it has been in office the PPP/C has never seemed to recognize that it is functioning in a modern context. It has certainly made use of modern technology, but at a conceptual level it has never given the appearance of grasping how that technology has transformed the political environment. It is just not possible any longer to keep a tight rein on the mass media so the public receives only government approved messages, Pyongyang style. There are too many sources of information nowadays which are accessible to the citizenry and are quite beyond the control of the administration. Besides, there are as many Guyanese living outside the country as live within its borders, and they are witnesses to how things are done differently in the big, bad Western world. They underwrite their relatives here, for example, with generous remittances, and those relatives, even if they are not in constant communication with them about developments here, will in any case draw the inevitable conclusions about how open societies are supposed to function.
The reality may have struck home to the governing party following the November 28 election campaign. They had control of NCN television, and the majority of the other stations were sympathetic to their cause, including Channel 28. The few which were not, lacked a signal which could extend any distance, with the exception of Channel 6, which they managed to put ‘under manners.’ They had a complete monopoly on radio, control of one newspaper and backing from another run by one of their ‘friends.’ This was quite apart from the use of state resources to persuade voters to put their ‘X’ next to the cup, and untold millions spent on advertising, posters, flags, towering billboards, freebies and entertainment at rallies, etc; no other party came anywhere close to this level of expenditure. Yet the outcome of all of that was their worst showing since the party came into existence.
The lesson is that it is impossible in the modern era to shut out contrary voices, in addition to which it is not as easy to manipulate minds as it used to be in the days before television and more especially, the internet. Even the Chinese cannot keep their society hermetically sealed as Mao Zedong was able to do in an earlier era. And while government is scattering laptops around like confetti, it cannot believe that those laptops will not become an instrument in the hands of some, at least, to tap into a range of information sources to which the party would prefer they didn’t have access.
Like all the other parties in the National Assembly, one would hope that the PPP/C might finally be reconciling itself to the reality that it has to operate in a cacophonous world, whose noises it simply cannot silence; to be given a hearing above the din it needs to cultivate the art of reasoned argument and persuasion, because as fast as it shuts down one source of sound another will open up. The failure of its airwaves policy, for example, was nowhere more evident than in Linden, where it doggedly hung on to both a TV and a radio monopoly but still lost Region 10 in grand style.
The PPP/C’s promise to relinquish the radio monopoly dates back to 1992, and in the interim it has also prevented independent television stations from extending their signals. In 2001 it set up a Joint Committee with the PNCR to look at broadcast legislation, under which licences to broadcasters could be issued, but the draft legislation which the government eventually produced did not fully reflect the agreements which had been made. The liberalising of the sector, therefore, was held up by the government on the grounds that accord with the main opposition had proved elusive, and it was not disposed to alter that stance even after a High Court ruling that the refusal of licences to two plaintiffs from Linden constituted a denial of freedom of expression which was guaranteed under the constitution.
Finally, on July 28 last year the government did in fact pass a Broadcasting Bill, surprisingly with the support of the AFC. The Act has all the characteristic flaws of much of the legislation of the last two decades in that the government will retain control by direct and indirect means. The statute sets up a National Broadcasting Authority and a governing board; the members of the latter with one exception will be named by the President, including the chairman. The one exception will be nominated by the Leader of the Opposition after “meaningful consultation” with the parliamentary opposition parties. It is the Authority which will issue licences for not more than ten years, and will also be responsible for suspensions and revocations.
Licensees are also required to carry a certain percentage of public service broadcasting or development support broadcasting (whatever that is) at no cost, and as an editorial in this newspaper of July 25 last year pointed out, reflected in the legislation is an “uncomfortable amount of definition of what is acceptable and what should be considered as balanced.” A matter of possible concern too is Article 37(3), which says that the minister when it appears necessary or expedient may by notice require the Authority to direct licensees to refrain from including in their programmes any matter or class of matters, and that the Authority shall comply with such notice. In short, the instruments for controlling content are in the government’s hands.
It could conceivably be that this power would not be used irresponsibly, but even if that were so it is not the point; the point is that there should be no piece of legislation on the statute books which could be used by any government to stifle dissent. After all, Guyanese over the years have had plenty experience of the denial of media freedom, and seek the opening up of the broadcast sector, not its closing. In the case of radio, at least, freedom of expression hasn’t existed since 1979, when the late Mr Burnham bought over Radio Demerara, and it does the PPP/C administration no credit that it made no genuine effort in nearly twenty years of office to remedy that defect. That it was all along operating in bad faith is evident from the fact that during what was supposedly a moratorium on the granting of licences, a government educational channel and a religious channel were given the green light.
There will be many issues jostling for priority on the parliamentary agenda, but one hopes that at some point all parties – including the PPP/C and the AFC – will see the wisdom in not leaving the Broadcasting Act 2011 untouched, but undertake to make some amendments. In the current information climate it is an exercise in futility to try and impose total control over the media, however indirectly that is done, so no one has anything to lose by genuinely liberalising broadcasting.
