Wes­ley Gib­bings

George­town-More than 50 of Guyana's me­dia pro­pri­etors, ed­i­tors and jour­nal­ists have signed on to a vol­un­tary Me­dia Code of Con­duct for Elec­tions as cam­paign­ing in­ten­si­fies ahead of forth­com­ing elec­tions. The code had been for­mu­lat­ed in time for last year's abort­ed lo­cal gov­ern­ment poll, but both the state and pri­vate me­dia sig­ni­fied their re-com­mit­ment to the code which was built on an agree­ment first en­dorsed in time for the 2001 elec­tions. The Code al­so ap­plied to elec­tions cov­er­age in 2006 as part of a process that in­volved sys­tem­at­ic mon­i­tor­ing of me­dia per­for­mance in the con­text of the code and the work of an In­de­pen­dent Me­dia Pan­el com­pris­ing se­nior Caribbean jour­nal­ists Wyvolyn Gager of Ja­maica and Lennox Grant of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Chair­man of the Guyana Elec­tions Com­mis­sion (GECOM) told jour­nal­ists as­sem­bled for a work­shop on the Code Fri­day and yes­ter­day, he thought the ode played a big role in the fact that the 2006 elec­tions which saw the re­turn of the rul­ing Peo­ple's Pro­gres­sive Par­ty (PPP), ran smooth­ly and vir­tu­al­ly with­out ma­jor in­ci­dent. The sign­ing, how­ev­er, comes at the height of con­flict in­volv­ing a de­ci­sion to shut down the op­er­a­tions of a con­tro­ver­sial tele­vi­sion sta­tion on the strength of reg­u­la­tions re­lat­ed to the work of an Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Broad­cast­ing, over which Pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo has min­is­te­r­i­al ju­ris­dic­tion. Jagdeo is at the end of his tenure as Pres­i­dent in keep­ing with a con­sti­tu­tion­al two-term lim­it. The clo­sure of CNS Chan­nel 6 for four months came in­to ef­fect last Mon­day fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions linked to a com­men­tary pro­gramme that has since cor­re­spond­ing­ly be­come the fo­cus of a defama­tion suit.

CNS Chan­nel 6 own­er, CN Shar­ma-him­self the leader of the small Jus­tice for All po­lit­i­cal par­ty-was among the sig­na­to­ries to the Code yes­ter­day. He told Sun­day Guardian the mea­sure was im­posed with­out re­gard for the plight of over 30 em­ploy­ees and the fact that the sta­tion was an im­por­tant plat­form for the broad­cast­ing of po­lit­i­cal mes­sages from op­po­si­tion par­ties that did not en­joy easy ac­cess to state and oth­er me­dia. A po­lit­i­cal ral­ly to be staged in George­town to­day is wide­ly ex­pect­ed to be the plat­form to be used by Jagdeo to an­nounce the date of the elec­tion. Un­der the coun­try's laws, an an­nounce­ment must be made at least 32 days be­fore elec­tion day.