The family of the child who was disqualified from the Mashramani calypso contest after she sang about the government’s 6.5% salary increase yesterday said that the incident has left them “deeply disappointed and disheartened”.
After being allowed to contest several rounds of the children’s Mashramani competition, Ezeka Minty was disqualified in what has been seen as censorship and a clear violation of the child’s rights under the United Nations’ Rights of the Child Convention. The disqualification of the child has also been seen as reflecting the government’s intolerance of anything remotely critical even from a child.