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Attorney General introduces race in radio frequency protest
– dub media reports “racial profiling”
“Ethnicity has been made an issue,” said Attorney General, Anil Nandlall, yesterday as he offered the ruling People’s Progressive Party’s view on the issuance of radio licences in 2011.
Nandlall was at the time addressing a PPP press conference at Freedom House, Robb Street, Georgetown, yesterday. He said that the move by former President, Bharrat Jagdeo, to issue radio licences was in fact the discharging of a 2006 manifesto promise to break the monopoly on radio which was held by the State.
Attorney General, Anil Nandlall
Nandlall, who is also the Minister of Legal Affairs, said that permission was granted to a wide cross-section of individuals. “We did not give one or two permissions to operate in this sphere, we granted approximately 10 permissions…When one examines the grantees one would see that they spread from Essequibo to Berbice, to Linden; so there is geographic evenness in the distributions of the licences.”
Nandlall is of the firm view that the manner in which the issuance of radio licences is being portrayed in sections of the media is one that speaks to “racial profiling”. He expressed the view that “a deliberate impression is being conveyed that only persons of a certain ethnicity have been granted licences…you pick up the newspaper and you see only one ethnicity of persons whose photographs appear in articles relating to this issue.”
This state of affairs, according to Nandlall, is an unfortunate practice by some media houses and in fact amplifies irresponsibility when press freedom is considered.
However, while acknowledging that there were articles published with photographs of all of the licencees, Nandlall failed to comment on the fact that other articles that were published with the photographs of a selected few were intended to emphasise that they were the recipients of multiple frequencies.
Those that were granted multiple frequencies have been identified as the “friends” of the former President who coincidentally are all of one ethnicity, hence allowing for Nandlall’s deduction.
But according to him, the articles have in fact served to “convey a distinct impression to the public that there was racial profiling and ethnic profiling in the granting of licences in relation to radio” even as he sought to emphasise that four Indo Guyanese and five Non-Indo Guyanese were granted radio licences.
Nandlall was at pains to say that the PPP, and by extension the Government, will continue to be committed to freedom of expression even in the face of growing criticism.
“I wish to restate that we have a long legacy and a proud history of protecting and preserving freedom of expression and freedom of the press in all its manifestations and forms,” said Nandlall. He added too that the PPP’s history in this regard can in fact be traced to January 1, 1950, when the party was formed.
“…At a previous forum I had explained that we can personally relate to the denial of freedom of expression because we had been a victim of a denial of newsprint to print our party’s newspaper.”
The matter then, he said, was taken to the courts which found that the PPP was not denied its freedom of expression.
“We understand the importance of freedom of expression and hence from 1992 to 2011 you would have seen under this administration the establishment of over 20 private television stations stretching from one end of this country to another,” stressed Nandlall.
He also alluded to the advent of two additional new daily newspapers and “you would have observed that the entities that sprung up under this administration, some of them have not been generally supportive of this administration…In fact some of these very operatives have been highly critical of this administration but this administration has never sought to use executive power to impose punitive sanction in an unreasonable and unlawful fashion…” added Nandlall.
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