Jagdeo says justified in distribution of broadcast licences

Former president Bharrat Jagdeo said he is justified in the decisions he made in the granting of broadcast licences, especially the radio licence he gave to his own party, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP).

“They talk about the friends and family thing, the broadcast legislation. Every time I opened the papers I see Jagdeo gave his friends and family this stuff… you hear every single day, friends and family, and of course the PPP got a licence and I don’t mind that one,” he told a forum his party held at the Sleepin Hotel on corruption, last week.

Further, he added “I am a politician, so they can accuse me of that one.”

He was referring to Freedom Radio, which operates daily out of the party’s headquarters, Freedom House, Robb Street, Georgetown.

Shortly before the 2011 general elections, Jagdeo distributed a number of radio licences and frequencies among mainly friends and supporters of the PPP. Many groups and persons have since denounced the awards, citing the absence of any clear objective criteria in making them as well as the disregard for applications from established media entities.

The Guyana Media Proprietors Association has called for a reversal of the decisions, while the Guyana Press Association has expressed concern that the distribution of the licences and frequencies was weighted in favour of friends of the governing party. Broadcaster Enrico Woolford has filed a lawsuit to quash Jagdeo’s decision arguing that it was unconstitutional. There have been other calls for the licences to be revoked.

The PPP in defence had posited that in the absence of the Guyana National Broadcasting Authority (GNBA), Jagdeo had the responsibility for issuing these licences. It was said that had the “government-friendly individuals” met the three criteria considered then their radio licences would have been granted.

The criteria in keeping with the law would have been that the applicants must be fit and proper; must have the financial means, the technical skills and requirements which allow them to obtain spectrum access.

The former president reasoned that out of the 10 licences he had given out, an argument can be made that six of the persons have no affiliation to him. “I have a lot of friends and family and I am supposed to be racist but they don’t say that six of the ten were given to non-Indians. So Maxwell Thom and Christie and Rudy Grant and Alphonso are suddenly my friends and family members, all of them,” he said.

GNBA Chairman Leonard Craig has said that the agency was working to come to a comprehensive decision on the way forward in dealing with the issue. However, to date no decision has yet been made. Meanwhile, Jagdeo also used the forum to blast the APNU+AFC on allegations that they made against his government that he said they cannot to date prove.

He pointed to gold smuggling and the fact that government has said that 15,000 ounces of gold was being smuggled out weekly.

“That works out to about $10 billion in royalty, so they should be collecting $10 billion more and the economy should have had an injection of close to US$1 billion. Where is this?” he questioned while quipping “or they must have continued it.”

Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman last Friday said that government has sought international help in investigating the smuggling here to help find “a targeted approach” to tackle the issue, adding that the numbers are down, but smuggling has not been eradicated.

Jagdeo also listed the Hope Canal, the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA) expansion project, the Specialty Hospital and the Marriott Hotel project, as PPP initiatives that were highly criticized by the current administration but all have since been implemented.

“Every single day [there used to be] in their headlines, a major set of lies being peddled by the dailies and the cronies in the media houses…this is just an indicator of what we had to face…one would have assumed that since we were so corrupt that sixteen months later, this government would have found out who the money launderers were and where the monies went.,”

“Now, it is as if none of these things existed and they are now saying, at the Marriott we are going to go ahead with the project …because it is a profitable venture….the CJIA they are going ahead with it without even an audit… I can go on and on…,” he added.

He said that his party plans to use public forums to discuss each project and persons should come with questions to get clarity and make a decision on if his party was corrupt or not.