Cabinet wants GECOM to review the MMU reports before publishing

By Radha Motielall

 [www.inewsguyana.com] – Government Spokesman Dr. Roger Luncheon said, Cabinet wants the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to play a greater role in the reportage of its Media Monitoring Unit (MMU).

He said the MMU is a creation of GECOM and the monitoring cannot be separated from a review and response from GECOM in the context of “elections management”.

Cabinet is therefore suggesting that the MMU reports be subjected to GECOM’s attention and that GECOM’s views be brought to bear on those reports before they are published.

This call stems from the fact that the Cabinet is still concerned with the MMU’s review of Former President Bharrat Jagdeo statements made at Babu John on March 8.

Addressing the matter Dr. Luncheon said the former president was at the time repeating, what, was allegedly said by other individuals. “In the case of this inference, Cabinet is contending that there were material facts about the former president’s contention, fact 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 governing party,” Dr. Luncheon said.

 Dr. Luncheon said and if he recalled, as he was there, at the March 8, Babu John event,   “we would kick them out immediately,” was the former president’s response, to the suggestion of a member of the governing party making such remarks.

 It is in this regard, that Dr. Luncheon said that Cabinet then is uncertain and unclear on the inference drawn by the MMU that the former president’s remarks could be deemed racially divisive. “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 a inference that those remarks were racially divisive,” Dr. Luncheon said.

 Meanwhile, Dr. Luncheon did clarify that Cabinet is yet to hear from GECOM as it pertains to its earlier contention, regarding the clarification of how the statement was deemed “racially divisive.”