Jagdeo’s Babu Jaan remarks racially divisive – Media Monitoring Unit

After reviewing a broadcast of the speech made by former President Bharrat Jagdeo at Port Mourant

Former President, Bharrat Jagdeo

last month, the Media Monitoring Unit (MMU) of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) says the remarks he made were racially divisive. The MMU, on Tuesday made public its first report on the media’s coverage of the election campaign where it addressed the public outcry over Jagdeo’s delivery at a Memorial Ceremony held for former President and founder-leader of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Dr. Cheddi Jagan. Noting that Jagdeo’s delivery at the Corentyne, Berbice memorial site on March 8, last, had been broadcast on national television, National Communications Network (NCN), the MMU said that this opened the way for it to address the matter. The report on the March 1 to March 31 period, focused on part of Jagdeo’s speech which it noted stirred significant negative public reactions. The controversial part of the speech it focused on reads “…but they consistently, 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 said that this was sourced from NCN TV which broadcast Jagdeo’s entire speech the following day. After reviewing the remarks made, the Unit took the position that it was obvious that Jagdeo was using a racial mobilization incident that allegedly occurred during the 2011 elections to make the point that racism will not be tolerated by his political party, the PPP/C. For the record, the MMU said that Jagdeo’s speech was the first time such details were ever publicly disclosed by anyone from the ruling PPP/C, the opposition political parties, local civil society, international elections observers, or the media. The body noted that on the face of it, this is salutary. “However, what was palpably disconcerting about the remarks made is where they were uttered, the occasion on which they were stated, and the immediate receptors of the message.” The MMU is of the view that it would be counter intuitive to view Dr. Jagdeo’s comments in isolation from the environment in which they were uttered. “At close up, he was speaking in a known PPP/C stronghold, before a predominantly East Indian audience, and, to boot, in a highly-charged political and ethnic environment,” it said. “Taking into consideration the historically and politically influenced divisions that persists 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.” The Unit added that it is within the foregoing context, that it concluded that the remarks made by Jagdeo “were racially divisive and should have been edited by all sections of the media that broadcast or printed the remarks verbatim. The media was reminded that the airing/publication of the comments as is, was a breach of Section B (1) of the Media Code of Conduct (MCC), which among other things state, that the media should “…refrain from publishing or broadcasting any matter with the potential for, or likelihood of promoting or inciting hatred of any kind (including ethnic and political hatred)…” The unit said that it observed that two television stations aired Jagdeo’s speech in full, while one newspaper and some online news sites carried only the excerpted part. It noted that many media houses from both the state and private media shied away from reproducing the full speech or the contentious part thereof. “The actions of these media houses should not go unmentioned, hence,` we unhesitatingly take a quality time out to commend them for their nous and adherence, in this instance, to the MCC,” the body ended.