ROBERT CORBIN, desperate to overcome the internal threats to his leadership of the PNCR, including increasing open calls for him to step down, has chosen to blackmail Guyana’s hosting of the Tenth CARIFESTA (Caribbean Festival of Arts) with threats to create discord and disorder over the four-month suspension of the broadcast licence under which CNS Channel 6 has been operating.

Make no mistake about it, Corbin and CN Sharma, as politicians sharing a common anti-government agenda that extends to a passion for reckless abuse of facilities offered by television stations with which they are separately identified, are not fighting any battle for freedom of expression. Their own enlightened supporters would be so aware. At the same time, President Jagdeo should keep the door open for a practical compromise.

Corbin and Sharma are simply out to politically exploit this matter, one currently before a High Court Judge as they dance around Georgetown with slogans and threats, knowing they are guaranteed of comforting publicity.

They were doing so on Friday, aware that the Guyana Government and the CARICOM Secretariat have finalised arrangements for the official launch on Wednesday of CARIFESTA X with a spectacular cultural extravaganza scheduled for the Cenotaph square with performing artistes also from Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname. The Government can hardly be intimidated into a spoiling of the inauguration event.

Sharma and Corbin also know that a constitutional case relating to the temporary closure of CNS Channel 6 for acknowledged repeated violations of the letter and spirit of its operational licence with a chilling criminal threat is currently before Justice William Ramlal, and scheduled to be further addressed on Wednesday.

Ahead of both the court hearing and the later scheduled cultural extravaganza at the Cenotaph on Wednesday, Corbin and colleagues, including recently rehabilitated, post-PNCR congress, ‘comrade’ Hamilton Green, current Mayor of Georgetown, chose to carry out their anti-government demonstration on Friday.

The shouted slogans and speeches during that exercise would have been sufficient to convince any who may have thought otherwise, that the event was designed and implemented to gain political points and no objective assessment of the circumstances of the suspension of Channel 6 licence.

The PNCR’s Corbin and Sharma championing freedom of expression and press freedom? Forget it. Their mixed bag of offerings on favourite topics like “corruption”, cost of living, discrimination, marginalisation, problems in education sector–and more–betrayed their real intent.

They are simply making politics under the guise of defending freedom of expression, and clearly disinterested in any attempt to show their own understanding of the dangers in trivialising the terms of a broadcast licence and, most certainly, to avoid criminal threats during a live broadcast, as in the relevant case that identified President Jagdeo as a potential victim.

In contrast to the bellicose shoutings of Corbin, Sharma and others, the slogans on placards carried by a few employees of Channel 6 spoke encouragingly with pleas for reconsideration of the period of suspension. One such placard, pleaded: “Mr. President please reduce the penalty”. Another said, “four months suspension too harsh”.

While Corbin and Sharma are doing their own political thing, President Jagdeo and his advisers would do well, as we stated earlier, to keep the channels open for an urgent review of the suspension period with the likelihood of a significant reduction.

Such a review could be associated with a written apology by CNS Channel 6 for the offence committed and firm assurance to honour the letter and spirit of its broadcast licence. A spirit of compromise can do no harm.