AG reasserts position on Guyana’s advances on press freedom front

VETERAN politician and co-founder of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), Brother Eusi Kwayana, told the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry (CoI) on Tuesday that the political climate of the 1970s was more of a “closed kind of society developing” and underscored the former People’s National Congress(PNC)administration’s efforts in preventing freedom of speech.

The 89-year-old Kwayana, who travelled from San Diego, California to present his evidence, said: “Our paper, the ‘Dayclean’ was printed in Trinidad and Tobago because no one here would print it. There was a ban on newsprint, so this thing about the right to freedom of expression and those other rights that have to do with communication were against us. No printer would print our papers because they think they would be penalized.”

“Freedom was closing down.” – WPA co-founder and veteran politician Eusi Kwayana

Kwayana also noted that the population was under severe restraint, to the extent that one had to apply to the Government for a quota of newsprint. He added that there was “no way under the sun” that a state newspaper

would have requested an interview from Dr. Rodney, unless there was a political purpose.

“Freedom was closing down,” Kwayana said.

The politician bemoaned the lengths to which the public media had become Government-controlled.

MAINTAINED POSITION
Attorney-General (AG) and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, in an interview with the Guyana Chronicle, reasserted his position on the current state of press freedom in Guyana. That position was made public in March on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day.

Nandlall said Guyana has come a long way in terms of press freedom, and the country is making moves to advance this effort; and that is the context in which the subject of press freedom must be viewed.

He said: “Before we assess today’s state of the press in Guyana, I believe it is incumbent (upon us) that we reflect on what existed before we can make an accurate assessment.

“…not so far in our distant past, we lived in a society where the press was absolutely controlled by the Government of the day. The medium through which information was disseminated was singularly from the Government sources.
Newsprint was denied to Opposition political parties for the publication of their newspapers, and when a legal challenge was launched against that restriction on the importation of newsprint, the highest court of the land ruled that there is no direct impact between newsprint, the importation of which was necessary at the time, and freedom of the (press).

“There is absolutely no attempt by the Administration, of which I am a part, to influence what those private media houses publish. None at all! There is no attempt to censor any journalist practising his trade or professional pursuit in this country. None at all!”
— Attorney-General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall

“We come from a history where journalists were beaten, brutalised, jailed, and murdered,” he declared.

Nandlall said that Guyana today has Government newspapers; private newspapers; private media houses; is operating some 20-odd television stations; has Internet-generated news agencies; and the radio spectrum has been opened up, affording eight radio stations spectrum to operate, only two of which are controlled by the Government.

He also stressed that the administration makes absolutely no attempt to influence what private media houses publish. Nandlall said: “There is no attempt to censor any journalist practising his trade or professional pursuit in this country. None at all! In fact, what we have in Guyana is press freedom sometimes being abused. One only has to pick up the newspaper and you see the extremity about which I speak.”

WITHIN CONTEXT
The AG urged that before comments are made about the state of any situation, as has been done in some quarters of the political sphere, there must be consideration of what existed before and what obtains in present day – an understating of the prevailing context.

He said: “Every country has (its) own peculiar biases and prejudices, and the news is going to be slanted in a particular way. Guyana, I suppose, is no different.

“…a lot has been said about the state media; the state media was highlighted. The importance of the public media, rather, was highlighted only last year at UNESCO’s General Assembly meeting.

“The point was made very emphatically that the public media has a very important role to play, because the public media is not driven by profits, which essentially is what drive the private media.

“The public media targets certain rural communities which otherwise may not have access to the private media because it simply is unprofitable for the private media to operate in those rural communities; and therefore, the public media is the only source of information to those outlying areas.

“…we live in a country that is relatively vast in comparison with our populations, and therefore the state media has an important role to play.”

Guyana has moved up two places on the 2014 Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index. It is now ranked at 67 out of 180 countries. Last year, the country came in at number 69 out of 179 countries. Reporters Without Borders is a non-profit organisation based in France. The Press Freedom Index is an annual ranking of countries compiled and published by this body based upon its assessment of each country’s press freedom record in the previous year.

In Guyana under the PPP/C led Administration, over the last 20 years, the local media fraternity, both print and electronic, has grown exponentially.

(By Vanessa Narine)