ATTORNEY General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall has repudiated the notion that a political party can engender transfer of budgetary allocations from the State media to another entity and regards it as “a blow to democracy and violation of the constitutional rights of the citizens to receive government information”. He said it is an attempt to interfere with the government’s ability to disseminate information about its work.
His remarks came in wake of the Alliance For Change (AFC’s) stated intention to withdraw support for budgetary allocations to the state media entities, specifically the National Communications Network (NCN) and the Government Information Agency (GINA).
AFC member Moses Nagamootoo, a former long serving member of the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP), is reported in the media as saying that he will vote against the allocations for GINA even if it calls for shutting down the agency  and that NCN will also be dealt with.
This was after the party’s leader Khemraj Ramjattan proposed in the National Assembly that spending for three ministries be cut by about $3B, a move that would have seen hundreds of workers losing their jobs. It was however, rejected and prompted a large number of government workers to come out in protest.
GINA, a successor to the Ministry of Information that was headed by Nagamootoo at the time and the Government Information Service (GIS), disseminates information on the policies and programmes of the government on a daily basis.
Nandlall said the government of any democratic state has a responsibility to keep the nation informed of its business.
“The government’s business is not a private business; it is the people’s business because the government is engaged in an agenda that will impact and improve the lives of every Guyanese… it is the medium of a Government Information Agency… a government-run television station… newspaper, that are the accepted international mediums by which a government communicates with its people,” Minister Nandlall said.
The minister made reference to Article 146 of the constitution which gives Guyanese the fundamental right to receive information which government has a right to disseminate.
Nagamootoo had said that the idea of $130M going to GINA is inexplicable when government has said that it cannot give Guyanese more than $20 a day on their pensions.
“When you are faced with a government that says that ‘we cannot afford to pay more in pension, we cannot afford to pay more in social assistance’, and then proposing this money for GINA, we say that our conscience is clear: we will vote against GINA, even if it means shutting the whole thing down,” Nagamootoo said.
He made this vow during a media briefing the AFC had called at the Sidewalk Café on Middle Street to address some of the concerns and issues regarding the 2012 budget, and consideration of the Estimates, which began Wednesday.
Nagamootoo also said that the AFC intends to deal with this newspaper – the Guyana Chronicle – and the National Communications Network (NCN), both of which he accused of ‘slandering’ the opposition every day in “attack mode”, and does not give a right to reply.
He argued that in a democracy, the opposition is part of the government, and the AFC will demand to be respected as part of the government.
“Since people voted us into parliament, we have a right, as well as the governing party, to explain to people what we are doing with the confidence they vested in us, and with their mandate.
“And so, if we have no access to NCN and to the Chronicle — that is being used to bludgeon, and defame and destroy people’s character every day — we will have to deal with them. Because the mandate of the people is that, if they are State media, they should be at the service of all the people.”
He stressed that the AFC would be inflexible in its position that taxpayers’ money should not be going into subventions to GINA and NCN.