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The warnings are out
“The Guyana National Broadcasting Authority (GNBA) is considering serious sanctions for errant broadcasters, who continually defy the rules for responsible dissemination of information during the elections period”(KN December 13).
The GNBA must do that first and quickly (consider) and then move to implement the “serious sanctions” that it mentions. This environment, this country cannot afford otherwise, does not have the capacity to absorb the surge tides that are sure to flow.
Local broadcasters, as is their right, should be allowed to do all the talking and sharing that they wish in the public domain, but only within the limits of what is conducive to maintaining temperateness and calmness in the countless discussions and offerings placed before the public in the run-up to elections. But if and when broadcasters don’t, then the GNBA must stop talking and considering, and be ready to act forcefully and authoritatively.
There must be no exceptions for instances of “errant broadcasters”. This is said by this publication, regardless of which side of the platform such negligence or recklessness or irresponsibleness originates. This society is too much on tenterhooks with its multiplicity of suspicions, rumors, distrusts, and sharp, piercing volumes. It is not even 2020, and there is a sense of the intensity of the passions that rage just below the surface gurgling.
With such emotions and sentiments at a low-grade fever pitch from now, only the greatest of care, the most watchful attention would be acceptable to manage what is promised, and what could leech out from now.
There were dress rehearsals of what is in store when the immediate social aftermath of the no-confidence motion is recalled. The peoples of this society went from a Christmas footing to the slipperiest, most agitated of footings in a flash.
All the ancient bigotries came to the fore; all the ugly, unappealing nakedness of Guyana was placed on uncaring public display: this is who we are, this is how we are, at the core, and this is how we will be. Some of the same were kindled and rekindled in the preludes to court decisions, and in their heaving aftermaths.
The people themselves do not need much inciting or any additional leverage, for those are there in the thoughts and words of Guyanese among their own, and out of earshot. Since that is out of bounds for any oversight body, it must stay there, and not wend its wicked way into the streams of public conversations.
This is tendered, because if any broadcaster, any entity, any group is given the tiniest of spaces to exploit–through hesitancy or lack of strength or will from the direction of the GNBA–then it will be. The suggestive and inflaming and consuming can all be brought to bear, through sweetly skilled or bluntly crude angles and thrusts that inflict further disputatiousness and disharmony on a society that already has had more than its share of both.
As was also carried by KN (December 13), the GNBA has indicated that, though temporary ban/suspension is not a definite course of action for those found in breach, the authority will use those powers at its disposal.
This paper goes on record to say politely that this is not enough, as it affords broadcasters the opening to ply their divisive wares in classic hit and run guerilla fashion, while the limits of official patience and discretion are probed.
“Temporary” and “not a definite course of action” sound (and are) weak and vacillating, which only encourages the adventurism of heedlessness in practitioners, some of whom forget, in a hurry , the professionalism and the due care demanded at this most sensitive of times.
This is not the wisest of steps, since the technology has furnished the channels like never before: wide open, far reaching, cheap and convenient, and which facilitates opportunities and means to cultivate untold mischief.
We are no strangers to mischief and, if anything, we have become more sophisticated in concocting and delivering such mischief, with the objectives of directing the largest number of citizens, sometimes along the most problematic pathways.
The damage is done before we know it or can reverse course thus, decisive action should be the norm for those who fumble, since more than enough cautions have been issued, and none should or could claim ignorance or innocence.
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