“THE MMU (Media Monitoring Unit) in its exercise of its monitoring mandate should not act independently of GECOM (Guyana Elections Commission),” according to Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon.Addressing the contentions in the MMU’s first report, which covers the month of March, at his post- Cabinet press briefing on Wednesday, he added that the MMU is a creation of GECOM.

“It is felt that their output must and needs to be drawn to GECOM’s attention prior to its publication,” he said.

Dr Luncheon added that the MMU’s function of media monitoring is “intricately caught up” in the functions of the Commission, relative to its constitutional mandate.
“It is indeed intricately caught up in GECOM exercising its constitutional mandate,” he said.
The HPS also reiterated the Cabinet’s concerns over problematic “inferences” made by the MMU, relative to comments made by former president, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, at Babu John on March 8.
“In the case of this inference, Cabinet is contending that there were material facts that those statements alluded to were acknowledged as statements made by others originally for which the former President disclosed the likely response, were those statements to be made by a member of the governing party, he said we will kick them out,” Dr Luncheon said.
At an event at Babu John last month, Dr Jagdeo, while stressing that there is no place for divisions in the Guyanese society along racial lines, pointed to an example of what was done during the 2011 General and Regional Elections.
He said: “They shout about racism of the PPP, but they practise racism. They whisper campaigns. In the last elections they went to some of the Afro- Guyanese villages and beat some drums at 6 O’clock in the morning and say let us throw out these coolie people. Get up, go out and vote, throw out the coolie people. That’s the kind of language they use. Anybody from our party who uses that sort of language, we will kick them out. This is our approach.”
The MMU concluded that his comments were “racially divisive” – although the Unit did say that this was “probably” not intentional.

The Unit said: “Taking into consideration the historically and politically influenced divisions that persist up to now between Africans and East Indians in this country, and which are usually more pronounced during elections periods, the Unit came to the conclusion that the anecdotal illustration used by Dr. Jagdeo to make his point about racism, boomeranged disastrously, since it came over as a calculated exploitation, for political purposes, of the known fears and insecurities of one section of the population: East Indians.
“It is within the foregoing context that the Unit verily concluded that the remarks made by Dr. Jagdeo were racially divisive[though] probably, not intentionally.”
Dr Luncheon said, “As a logical construct, inference about the same matter, could not be inconsistent, and if it were so, it would be illogical in this case, the statement that the former president made, was undisputedly (a) statement accredited to others and repetition of the statement, a disclosure of how it would be treated had it been made by a member of the governing party, PPP/C, and the ejection from membership could hardly, in a logical way, lead to an inference that those remarks were racially divisive.”
The HPS disclosed that these concerns will be communicated to the GECOM Chairman, Dr Steve Surujbally who, in an invited comment, told the Guyana Chronicle that he would address those once he receives such correspondence. (Vanessa Narine)