With the National Com-munications Network (NCN) broadcasting the PPP’s weekly press conference live for the past two weeks, APNU MP Joseph Harmon says the inability of both the ruling party and the state-run broadcaster to address the terms of the arrangement is astonishing but not surprising.
Using state assets to live stream a political press conference is “ridiculous” and continues to illustrate the interchangeable way in which the party behaves in relation to the government, according to Harmon.
He told Stabroek News that he will be speaking to APNU’s Executive to work out questions that needed to be asked about the arrangement in the National Assembly tomorrow.
“This is our money, the people of Guyana’s money that is being utilised on party matters,” he said.
“We have to demand financial statements from the company on a regular basis to see the income and the expenditures,” Harmon said.
Harmon said that NCN already behaved in a partisan manner and its “barefaced” actions at this point were beyond belief. “This is ridiculous. What we are seeing there is they are taking the assets of the state and repurposing it to the party,” he said.
He told Stabroek News that NCN has never approached APNU to offer the same service and it rarely covers APNU press briefings.
He said that as it stands, NCN covers portions of press briefings by the opposition parties and will continuously be selective in the coverage in an attempt to paint the opposition in negative light.
Stabroek News has tried to make contact with NCN Chief Executive Officer Molly Hassan since Monday without success. This publication was told to make contact with the marketing manager but ultimately the person responsible for speaking on the matter would be Hassan.
AFC MP Cathy Hughes had previously told Stabroek News that “NCN is an organisation that is clearly run by a political party. There is nothing about NCN that can be seen as a national broadcast. It is quite unfortunate.” She said that it was unacceptable that the state should be asked to fund an entity that is partisan.
The PPP has been heavily criticised for its partisan use of the state media.
