As we said in the editorial of February 10 relative to the granting of a licence and allocation of frequency to China Central TV, the PPP/C government appears unshakably determined to maintain a stranglehold on the airwaves and is accomplishing this by granting licences to only those it is comfortable with.
The defence of its actions has now been taken to a new level of recklessness and lawlessness by the Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon. Fully aware that the granting of broadcast licences and the managing of the electromagnetic spectrum must occur within a legal framework, Dr Luncheon on Thursday defended the accord for CCTV thusly “…But obviously if they’re instructed what do you think they would do? If you were the managing director of NFMU and the HPS called you and said we’ve just agreed with the People’s Republic of China to broadcast the signals and…, they have selected a channel to do so, could you please go ahead and assign a channel, you think he’s [the Head of NFMU] going to tell me [Luncheon] that you got to apply and all of those things? I doubt it.”
As noted by broadcast expert, Mr Kit Nascimento, Dr Luncheon is suggesting that if the government instructed the National Frequency Management Unit to bestow a licence on CCTV that edict immediately disposes of the requirement for any law to be complied with. No application needed. No justification must be supplied. No deliberation must occur on the merits of the proposal. No weighing of competing interests will ensue. Perhaps unintended, Dr Luncheon’s utterance might also explain the mechanics of how President Jagdeo’s administration granted radio licences to a coterie of his friends and supporters just shortly before demitting office last year even though there were worthier applications on file. Instructions were no doubt simply passed by the Jagdeo administration to the NFMU and whoever else needed to be instructed.
Aside from the trampling of lawfulness, Dr Luncheon’s statement is fecund with the merciless commandeering of agencies like the NFMU. They are playthings in the hands of the executive. There is no shred of independence and those who man these agencies are at the mercy of senior government officials like Dr Luncheon. This had always been known about President Jagdeo’s style of governance and just a year into his term President Ramotar’s administration has been uncloaked by the HPS.
Dr Luncheon was also the narrator in that other infamous incident which forced the Ramotar administration to backpedal: the photocopying of textbooks. Then, Dr Luncheon made bold to defend the government’s decision to photocopy textbooks for distribution to schools even in the face of widespread dismay that the state was disregarding intellectual property rights in the most vulgar manner. In another of his rhetorical flourishes, Dr Luncheon stated: “You could be a publisher with a copyright and you could offer to sell me the book for $1. My friend is a good photocopy artist and he could sell me the book for 10 cents. All of you are going to bid but who do you think is going to get it?”
Thankfully, good sense prevailed and President Ramotar reversed course. Given Dr Luncheon’s latest gaffe one wonders whether he should be the person communicating cabinet decisions to the media and defending them. The time has no doubt come for him to be assigned other duties. President Ramotar will however need to state for the record whether the government he is running is one that will allow laws to be bypassed just to facilitate a cloying and unquestioning accommodation of the interests of the Chinese government.
None of the licences that were so clandestinely and opaquely handed out by President Jagdeo before leaving office should have been permitted. They should have been rescinded by the Ramotar administration and the process restarted afresh under an acceptable broadcasting authority. That is still a course of action open to President Ramotar.
As things stand, this government and the past one have breached any number of undertakings to its political partners and stakeholders in the broadcast sector. The original agreement between former President Jagdeo and the late former President Hoyte lies in tatters. The embargo on the awarding of licences pending the deliberations of the 2001 committee on the radio monopoly was violated and the process ossified for years.
Just shortly before leaving office last year, President Jagdeo rubbed salt into the wounds by conjuring up radio licences for his friends and supporters in a process that is yet to be explained. To this day, the National Frequency Management Unit, to which Guyana Publications Inc, publishers of Stabroek News, submitted an application for a radio licence, has not provided an explanation to GPI for the rejection of its application. There was no communication by the NFMU to GPI on the application because GPI was never intended to have a licence. An independent examination of the NFMU’s handling of these applications would no doubt render the distribution of the radio licences as null and void.
Neither the award of the radio licences nor the licence to CCTV can withstand a rigorous review of the justification. The radio licences were former President Jagdeo’s doing. CCTV now falls on President Ramotar’s scorecard. What says he on the manner in which it was done and what does this say about the kind of governance and stewardship he is offering?
The licences fiasco apart, the broadcast sector has been saddled with a Guyana National Broadcast Authority whose governing act is totally unacceptable and unsuited to the needs of this country. It is hard to see how the authority will gain any traction with, and respect from those in the broadcast sector, save for the state media and the sycophants who were recognized last year. This is not something that President Ramotar can ignore and take lightly. The broadcast spectrum is a national asset that must be administrated and distributed in a manner that reflects the diversity, geography and sensitivities of the country.
How can the Chinese government be fast-tracked to a licence and frequency sans application when for months the Office of the President has been telling Lindeners that they have to apply to the GNBA for a licence even though this had not been stated in the August agreement between the region and the government? Something is definitely wrong here, Mr President.
