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Attacks on media create dangerous environment for election-Granger

Oct 13, 2011 News

 

Presidential Candidate for A Partnership for National Unity, David Granger, yesterday lashed out at President Bharrat Jagdeo and his colleagues for attacks on the media and media operatives. Granger is calling the attacks a dangerous environment for the 2011 election.
“So we are concerned about the government attitude to media,” said Granger, who said that the comments have caused astonishment.
He added that people rely on the media for information and if the media is muzzled or intimidated, the people will not get the quality of information to make the decisions they need to.”
Former president of the Guyana Press Association, Enrico Woolford, also took umbrage to certain statements made during the PPP/C rally in Kitty over the weekend, particularly comments by Presidential Advisor Gail Teixeira.
She had told the rally, “It is an indisputable fact that some media operatives and stations in Guyana called for ethnic violence in the 1997 and 2001 elections resulting in the bi-partisan committee which crafted the broadcasting policy that is now enshrined word for word in the new Broadcasting Act 2011.
“It is an indisputable fact that media operatives such as Enrico Woolford and Moses Nagamootoo, members of that committee, actively participated in the wording of that policy to ensure that the experience of those elections would never be repeated”
Earlier in the day, too, the Guyana Trades Union Congress also criticised President Bharrat Jagdeo and Presidential Advisor Gail Teixeira for attacking the media.
According to the GTUC in the wake of an attack on the media by President Jagdeo and the recent threat by Teixiera of reporting certain media houses to the United Nations, “GTUC urges government to go right ahead without delay.”
The Trades Union umbrella body said that it is “assured that the blanket control and domination of state media, restriction of broadcast licenses, suppression and intimidation of independent media, economic destruction of the media by targeting of advertisers to deny media freedom, use of the media as a wedge to divide society and create ethnic tensions and violence as well as disseminate PPP propaganda, will make for interesting analysis before an independent arbiter of the United Nations.”
It stated additionally that the consequence of fear of expression “forces media self censorship in order to survive; job losses and increased prices also result as media houses increase prices to offset advertisement suppression would make for interesting disclosures. These too relate to efforts and consequences of media suppression that the UN would be interested in.”
GTUC declared that it has a direct interest in media freedom as this is foundational to free, fair, transparent and credible elections and forging a society where the rule of law and good governance can prevail.
“It is the media’s role as a pillar of democracy to protect the rights of every citizen and where necessary expose those who violate the laws of the land and the rights of others…. The PPP government clearly does not desire that its activities be exposed for it would prefer that
Guyanese live in ignorance of the party’s misdeeds and corruption, lies, nepotism and criminal associations.”

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