Cutting GINA’s budget is an attack on press freedom

Written by T. KING

Sunday, 21 April 2013 21:52

CUTTING GINA’s budget is an attack on press freedom -not a single question was asked of the agency.
The combined Opposition is clear on the issue of press freedom in Guyana.
The combined Opposition to the PPP/C Government comprises the PNC;the AFC;Stabroek News; Kaieteur News and Mark Benschop’s news.

The Government should cut ads to SN and KN and its like which have declared war on press freedom..
I warn again that once government allows the combined Opposition to cut one single budget estimate then it has all the power in the world to cut and implement its very own budget to the Guyanese people.
It appears as though the combined Opposition is the new power of the land.
Speaker of the House, Raphael Trotman,has given himself tremendous power already to overrule the Supreme Court ruling on the combined Opposition cuts to the budget estimates last year.
It would appear that the Speaker of the House all alone by himself is now the guardian of the constitution.
Imagine the AFC’s Nigel Hughes instigated PNC thugs to inflict blows on innocent Guyanese whom they beat, robbed and sexually molested..
Speaker of the House, Trotman said the court has no right to intervene in parliamentary matters.
It is clearly becoming a very sad day for Guyanese knowing they voted for the PPP/C to form a government and to lead them and are waking up to the reality which appears to them that the PNC is ruling them instead.

Opposition displays dictatorial, anti-democratic tendencies by assaulting freedom of the press-AG

Written by GINA

ON Friday during the sitting of the National Assembly for the continuation of deliberations of the estimates of the 2013 national budget, the combined Opposition flexed its muscles by reducing the budgets for the National Communications Network (NCN) and the Government Information Agency (GINA) to $1 each.

Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall

Again, the Opposition is saying to the Guyanese people they are not entitled to information in respect of what is being done for them and they are not entitled to view important programming.
“More significantly however, by cutting the budgetary allocations to these news agencies the Opposition is once again displaying its inherent dictatorial and anti-democratic tendencies by assaulting freedom of the press and the constitutional right and freedom of the Guyanese[people] to receive information,” Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall said.
He noted that the PNC did the same thing during their dictatorial reign. “They murdered and jailed journalists, they banned importation of news script, they monopolised the press, they tolerated no dissenting views – today with their limited power in the Opposition they continue their attack on the press,” he added.
Nandlall stressed that while they remain critical of the government for liberalising the air waves in relation to radio licences – paradoxically and illogically they continue to demand air time on NCN and press coverage from GINA, but they cut the budgets of these agencies to $1 - in other words they have completely shut down entities yet they want coverage from them.
He assumed that as consideration of the estimates continues that the cutting and slashing will continue. Nevertheless, the PPP/C administration will continue to work to improve the people’s living standards everywhere and will also continue to provide support in any way possible through initiatives such as subsidies for water and electricity rates for pensioners, school uniform assistance and feeding programmes.
“The PPP/C administration will never abandon our people while the APNU and AFC have betrayed our people. We will stand with our people,” the Minister emphasised.
With regard to the shock of the cuts to the said agencies in 2012, the minister explained that fortunately the impact was not felt simply because the government was able to approach the court and got a ruling and the Finance Minister was able to go to the Consolidated Fund, via certain constitutional provisions, to restore the sums which were cut.
However, the difference this year is that there was a ruling from the Honourable Speaker of the National Assembly governing this matter, and that is the distinguishing factor between last year and this year.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh stated that everyday GINA tells the people what the president and ministers are doing, what the policies are, the latest on development projects and it is not a recent creation – in that it was not created by the present administration. Minister Singh explained that there used to be a British Guyana Information Service (more than 50 years ago) followed by the Government Information Service after independence, the Guyana Public Communications Agency, GIS and then GINA.
“If you look around the world, if you look around the Caribbean there are a multitude of examples, the overwhelming majority of countries in similar circumstances such as ours,” he said.
He also noted the public-interest role NCN plays in that Guyanese are able to view local production and cultural items freely as compared to any other TV station.
In a separate interview immediately after the cuts to both NCN and GINA, Minister within the Ministry of Finance, Juan Edghill stressed that one of the problems that GINA has had over the last year is getting staff because people feel so threatened.
“There are vacancies that exist so it is not just the mere cutting of GINA, but it’s what you did last year and what you are doing again this year…its like you’re telling any public communication professional, any young person who is pursuing a job in that particular skill, don’t work for GINA because at any time with this one-seat majority we could slash you down…you can’t plan a family, you can’t take a mortgage, you can’t pay for your car, you can’t plan your future because GINA is left to us – the dictatorship of one,” he said.
The minister ascribed such action to blackmail since the Opposition is giving the impression that if the organisation does not behave the way it wants it to that it will not allow the agency to work and operate.

Constitutional ramifications
Continuing on the Speaker’s ruling, Nandlall explained that the ruling has put the constitutional structure of Guyana in some form of disarray. “Because I believe that even lay people would by now recognise that the constitution of our country is supreme and the parliament, the executive and every other agency of state are subject to that supremacy…in that constitutional formula the Court is ascribed the responsibility to exclusively interpret that constitution and when that court does that - that is and must be regarded as the final pronouncement on that matter,” he noted.
Minister Nandlall explained that when the court’s jurisdiction in that regard is invoked and the court makes such a pronouncement, it is not open to any other agency in the land, to in an institutionalised way offer a ruling or an interpretation that is different from that which emanated from the court or else we will have the position that the executive, tomorrow, will determine that a pronouncement which comes from the court is not binding and should be regarded and the executive can place an interpretation on the constitution that it finds favourable.
“In the same vein that the Speaker interpreted the constitution to say that the National Assembly has the power to cut the budget, and in so doing he collided with an expressed pronouncement from the court, the executive can, today or tomorrow, decide that they will interpret that very provision to mean that the National Assembly does not have the power to cut…so we have these three vital organs of state each having an opinion of their own as to what the constitution says,” he noted.
In this regard, it is for the avoidance of these types of eventualities that the constitution reposes only in the court that responsibility. “The speaker essentially conferred upon himself a jurisdictional freedom to depart from a ruling of the court, and that is a power which he simply does not have…his ruling therefore has presented this nation with a constitutional enigma,” the Minister said.
Further, the constitutional anomaly which the Speaker’s ruling has created has far and deep-reaching implications way outside of the budgetary process. “This state of affairs have to be swiftly dealt with so recourse will have to be taken in the court to rectify what I consider to be and what is with the greatest of respect a constitutional errata,” Minister Nandlall emphasised.
Minister Singh stated that the Opposition’s elevation of his comments on this matter discloses their hypocrisy, their opportunism and the comedy that they represent.
Minister Singh indicated that the Opposition have latched on to one thing that he said last year and suddenly want to treat it as gospel. “That discloses to the nation that they are opportunistic, politically opportunistic and they are hypocritical…you cannot ignore 100 things the finance minister said, but one thing that he says that suits your purposes; you latch on and treat it as gospel…suddenly the finance minister is an authority on constitutional matters,” he said.
Dr Singh added that unlike the Attorney General, he is not the authority on constitutional matters but speak on the basis of his lay interpretation of the standing orders that were available to him at that point in time and in particular at a time when the matter was untested by the court.
“The matter was subsequently tested by the court, and I, like all of my colleagues in government bowed to the superior wisdom and the constitutional authority of the courts so irrespective of what our individual interpretations may have been, once the constitutional authority which is the court has pronounced on this matter I bow to the interpretations of this court, to the rulings of the court and so does the government,” he said

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