PNCR challenges legality of Advisory Committee on Broadcasting

May 23, 2009 News

With the government prepared to look away from a 2003 communiqué signed between leader of the Opposition Robert Corbin and Head of State Bharrat Jagdeo, General Secretary of the People’s National Congress Reform, Oscar Clarke, is of the opinion that media houses now have little or no resort but to abide by rulings by the President.
It was pointed out that given that the party’s position on the Advisory Committee on Broadcasting (ACB) is that it is illegal by virtue of being unconstitutionally set up, any letters and warnings issued by the body is thus null and void, and should be ignored by media houses.
According to Clarke, this was the reason the party was seeking to highlight what it is calling an emerging dictatorship.
When asked why the party keeps referring to the 2003 communiqué, Clarke said that it is the only document that speaks to the issue of broadcast legislation and caters for an interim role for the ACB.
Clarke, at the party’s weekly press briefing, said that it was a matter of public interest that the ACB has written to CN Sharma, objecting to two programmes aired by his station and that he has since replied that he would comply.
According to Clarke, in accordance with the 2003 Communiqué, “The draft broadcast legislation which will include provisions for the creation of a National Broadcasting Authority, would be ready for consultation within two months and be laid in the National Assembly within four months from 1st May 2003.”
Clarke added that the communiqué envisaged that “the Interim Broadcasting Committee would be disbanded immediately as the NBA comes into existence.”
He noted, too, that the issue at hand was the very existence of the ACB itself given that the PNCR is not aware that the ACB has been reconstituted, even though the Leader of the PNCR, Robert Corbin, in 2003, had called for such a reconstitution of the body.
“There was no response from the Jagdeo Administration….Yet suddenly it seems, without consultation with the PNCR, that a new ACB has come into being…The PNCR still does not recognise such an ACB, as it has already withdrawn its representative.” He called on the administration to explain to the nation how it arrived at the reconstitution of the ACB.
“As is usual, for the Jagdeo PPP/C Administration, they seem to have conveniently forgotten that commitment to bring broadcast legislation into being in a specific time frame. Instead, it seems to be quite comfortable with using the existing ACB as a convenient political tool to harass its media critics and those who do not agree with its policies.”

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PNCR challenges legality of Advisory Committee on Broadcasting

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