Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) has ac­cept­ed an out-of-court set­tle­ment with the State re­gard­ing breach of a po­lit­i­cal broad­cast un­der­tak­ing. Last month, the po­lit­i­cal par­ty had writ­ten the State-owned tele­vi­sion sta­tion Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG) de­mand­ing resti­tu­tion in the amount of $.3 mil­lion. In a le­gal let­ter to CN­MG in Oc­to­ber, at­tor­ney Nyree Al­fon­so, who is al­so chair­man of the First Cit­i­zens board, wrote the tele­vi­sion sta­tion seek­ing dam­ages. The COP is claim­ing it paid the sta­tion $218,500 for live broad­cast cov­er­age of its po­lit­i­cal ral­ly be­tween the hours of 2 pm and 5 pm on No­vem­ber 3, 2007.

How­ev­er, on­ly a part of the broad­cast was aired be­tween the hours of 2 pm and 3 pm. A de­layed broad­cast of the ral­ly was aired on the said day dur­ing the hours of 8 pm and 11 pm. As a re­sult, the COP de­mand­ed full re­fund plus an ad­di­tion­al $150,000 in dam­ages for breach of con­tract. Sun­day Guardian has learnt that the CN­MG board ac­knowl­edged the faux pas and has agreed to re­im­burse the par­ty. CN­MG, how­ev­er, con­tends that while the sta­tion was in breach, a re­peat of the broad­cast was aired on the said day.