Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Cen­tral Broad­cast­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (Ra­dio and TV Jaagri­ti) has no­ti­fied the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) that it will not broad­cast fu­ture speech­es of UNC MP Bar­ry Padarath.

This, af­ter the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty warned CB­SL about Padarath's use of the term "lazy son of a bi---" to de­scribe Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

The CB­SL no­ti­fied UNC gen­er­al sec­re­tary Pe­ter Kan­hai of the sit­u­a­tion in a May 19 let­ter from sta­tion man­age­ment. The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty al­so re­ceived a copy of the let­ter.

The mat­ter in­volved Padarath's term "lazy son of a bi---" which he used last De­cem­ber 5th in re­fer­ring to Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley dur­ing a UNC meet­ing car­ried on the CB­SL sta­tions. A re­peat of the re­marks made by Padarath at a meet­ing on May 15 was al­so cit­ed by the CB­SL.

The let­ter to Kan­hai was signed by CB­SL man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Vi­jay Ma­haraj. It stat­ed that mem­bers of the pub­lic and the Tele­com Au­thor­i­ty had drawn Padarath's De­cem­ber 2022 com­ments to the CB­SL's at­ten­tion.

On March 2, 2023, TATT is­sued a writ­ten warn­ing to CB­SL, stat­ing that the repet­i­tive use of the term "son of a bi--- was in­ap­pro­pri­ate, as it can be con­sid­ered as of­fen­sive lan­guage, es­pe­cial­ly when broad­cast at a time when chil­dren might be lis­ten­ing...."

CB­SL told Kan­hai, "We must add that we agree with TATT. How­ev­er, on this oc­ca­sion, we took no steps as we were of the view that it was a sin­gu­lar util­i­sa­tion of of­fen­sive lan­guage."

How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny not­ed a re­peat of the re­marks on May 15, fol­low­ing which there were "over­whelm­ing com­plaints."

Guardian Me­dia was told that when the re­marks were launched in May, the sta­tion cut trans­mis­sion of Padarath's re­mark.

The com­pa­ny in­formed Kan­hai it was seek­ing le­gal ad­vice on what steps should be tak­en in re­la­tion to TATT "an /or our con­tin­ued busi­ness with the UNC."

In the mean­time, "hav­ing re­gard to what is clear­ly MP Padarath's pat­tern of em­ploy­ing in­sult­ing and abu­sive com­ments, we are con­strained to ad­vise that with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, CB­SL will not broad­cast any fur­ther/fu­ture speech­es of MP Padarath."

The UNC was told that if it de­sired that the CB­SL broad­cast any fu­ture UNC event, "We will be cut­ting any cov­er­age of Mr Padarath..."

The warning letter which the Telecommunications Authority sent to Central Broadcasting Services Limited (Radio and TV Jaagriti) over the speeches made by United National Congress (UNC) MP Barry Padarath.

Sta­tion MD stands firm

Con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia, CB­SL man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Vi­jay Ma­haraj, stand­ing by the let­ter, said the sta­tion's stance hasn't changed on the mat­ter, since it hasn't been re­solved.

He said the UNC hadn't re­spond­ed in writ­ing, but of­fi­cials had in­di­cat­ed they would ask Padarath to be "soft­er." But Ma­haraj cit­ed the com­pa­ny's let­ter.

Ma­haraj said CB­SL could not jeop­ar­dise its li­cence. He not­ed that UNC meet­ings are car­ried si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly on its TV and ra­dio sta­tions.

"This sit­u­a­tion hap­pened out­side of elec­tion sea­son. We're now in elec­tion sea­son so we will be more care­ful and watch the lan­guage of oth­ers al­so," he said.

UNC of­fi­cials silent, Padarath de­fi­ant

Guardian Me­dia sent queries to UNC gen­er­al sec­re­tary Kan­hai on the is­sue but re­ceived no re­ply. Nor did UNC chair­man Dave Tan­coo re­ply.

How­ev­er, con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Padarath said, "The com­ment used was a quote from An­cel Ro­get de­scrib­ing Row­ley. I have no re­grets. Row­ley has said the most dis­gust­ing pro­fane things about Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

"The dou­ble stan­dards and hypocrisy in this coun­try amazes me. Not a word from TATT and oth­er groups when Row­ley re­ferred to Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's be­hav­iour as 'Jam­me­try' and spoke about 'cy­at, suck­ing at the nip­ples' et cetera," Padarath added.

"I sim­ply quot­ed what Ro­get had to say about Row­ley. No re­grets. Why was this not an is­sue when Ro­get said it? Let us not for­get that TATT is ap­point­ed by the gov­ern­ment and this gov­ern­ment is in­tent on sup­press­ing the democ­ra­cy and voic­es of the peo­ple."