The need for equitable access by political parties to the media, particularly those controlled by the state, remains among the areas of concern in the run up to next month’s elections, according to US Charge d’Affaires Bryan Hunt.
Questioned about whether he was satisfied that conditions are in place to facilitate a free elections process, Hunt told Stabroek News during an interview at the US Embassy on Thursday that there are gaps and issues of concern, with the most prominent at the moment being the political rhetoric “which I see not just as concerning to a free and fair process but frankly very dangerous for Guyana and its future.”
While emphasising that he would not make a judgement on the state of the playing field and that he cannot look at pieces of an electoral process since it would not be not fair to any of the stakeholders, the American diplomat acknowledged that there are some areas that need to be addressed.
Hunt noted that questions of state media access and the need for a political party code of conduct should be dealt with before the end of the campaign period. However, as far as the organisational aspects of the elections is concerned, “I believe the Guyana Elections Commission [GECOM] is doing a very credible job,” he asserted.
When President Donald Ramotar announced the May 11 date for general elections in January, the top US, United Kingdom and Canadian diplomats here, in a joint statement had called for improvements to be made to the electoral process based on observations made at the 2011 elections. The diplomats had said they hoped Guyana considers the recommendations, including improving mechanisms that guarantee more equitable access to media and political financing, adherence to timely and standardised procedures for the electoral process, improving communications with all stakeholders and in particular GECOM, and strengthening the promotion of gender balanced participation throughout the electoral process.
Questioned on improvements since, Hunt said it has been a mixed result. In some of those areas there has been improvement, he said, while noting that GECOM has taken a number of steps to strengthen its communication with the political parties and there seems to be improved communication between the commission and all of the international stakeholders as well as with the various local and international groups that plan to observe the elections.
“I also think we’ve seen a number of procedural changes that the commission has looked at in order to increase the timeliness with which the results will be announced; I know they’re looking at, they understand the importance of getting out the results in a timely fashion, I know the Chief Elections Officer is working very closely with all of his staff to emphasise the importance of getting timely results and I think we’ll see some progress on that front,” Hunt said.
He added that he was heartened that the gender balance issue was addressed head-on by GECOM when one of the candidates’ lists–submitted by APNU+AFC—did not include a sufficient number of female candidates and it was sent back and adjusted. He called this a very positive sign.
“Where I continue to see some very serious, unaddressed problems is in the area relating to the media. We all saw the first report of the Media Monitoring Unit. Not to put it too bluntly, that report was not a very good one. The reality is the results that they put out there demonstrated we have a serious problem with equitable access to the media for all of the parties and across the vast majority of the media outlets, it seems clear that parties are not having the same level of coverage provided in the various media outlets and they are not receiving what we would refer to as balanced coverage within the various media outlets,” Hunt said.
“The Media Monitoring Unit demonstrated there was a clear bias within a number of the media houses and it’s particularly concerning when we look at the state media. Private media, yes, has a responsibility—they signed the media code of conduct, we would expect them to adhere to that and provide equitable and balanced coverage—but the state media has an even greater responsibility because they are funded by the taxpayers of Guyana and the state media needs to adopt policies within their own editorial boardrooms that clearly establish they will cover each of the parties equally; that clearly establish that there will be balanced coverage where both positive and negative impressions of the candidates and their policies are put forward; where they will clearly allow both parties the ability to have free advertising and to purchase paid advertising on those state outlets,” he asserted.
Hunt said there are international best practices and there are things that the broadcast authority could do in terms of issuing regulations on the electronic media side in order to put in place requirements for access across both the private and the public media.
However, he said equally importantly, the board of directors of the state-controlled media houses simply have to do a better job of putting in place their own internal policies that clearly deal with the bias that was demonstrated in the initial MMU report. “My hope is that the media houses have paid attention to the first MMU report; my hope is that when we see the next Media Monitoring Unit report, it will reflect a better balance, more equitable coverage, more balanced coverage, particularly among state media outlets; that’s something that I think fundamentally has to be addressed and it’s still an area where, as we saw from the first statistics available, is very much a work in progress,” he said.
Abuse of state resources
As it relates to the abuse of state resources, the American diplomat said it is very difficult in speaking about abuse of state resources in a country like Guyana “because for reasons that frankly are inexplicable to me, successive parliaments have failed to put in place legislation that would clearly define what the boundaries are in terms of use of state resources in the Guyanese election.”
He said no one ever deemed it necessary to legislate some very clear boundaries and this puts all observers “in a bit of an awkward position because we don’t have a Guyanese benchmark against which to measure to measure these things.”
He said that they, therefore, have to look at international best practice and “when we stack it up against international best practice, yeah, there are problems, there is no questions there are problems.” He said that there are government vehicles that at times get used and there are also municipal vehicles that at times get used so both major campaigns are seeing some degree of benefit from use of state resources that by international best practice, the United States would argue against. He said the next parliament has to address the issue of what the rules are going to be in an electoral contest as it applies to the use of state resources and as it applies to campaign finance, which is another area largely unaddressed in Guyanese legislation.
In terms of whether there was an uneven playing field, Hunt cautioned against making such a judgement. “I would never make a judgement about that viscerally in a campaign. I think we have to wait until after the votes are cast and then we’ll be in a better position to judge the entire time period,” he emphasised.
He said that if he were to give an answer today, something could happen tomorrow that could change it radically. “We can see the observations, we can certainly see the dangerous trends when it comes to rhetoric and we can call on things to be addressed where there are clear gaps but in terms of judging the entire content of the electoral period as free and fair or not free and fair, I think we have to hold off until we’ve actually seen how things go on the day of voting and then judge the entire period going back to when parliament was dissolved,” he emphasised.
