EU offers help to monitor elections coverage

There could be help from the European Union (EU) for monitoring of elections coverage.
Recently, representatives of the EU visited the Guyana National Broadcasting Authority (GNBA) and met with Chairman of the Governing Board, Leslie Sobers, as part of their exploratory and fact-finding mission.
The EU wants to determine whether they should propose additional monitoring support to Guyana at the upcoming general and regional elections.

According to the authority, the primary focus of the engagement was for the EU to garner an understanding from on the state of affairs of the broadcasting landscape in Guyana and to establish from the authority its perspective as to whether citizens have easy access to information.

Sobers, GNBA said in a statement, in outlining the present state of the broadcasting sector informed the EU representatives of the geographical zones established for television, radio and cable broadcasting.
The Board Chairman also informed the representatives of the remit of the authority and more specifically its mandate including how content is being monitored.

“He also gave a brief historical background on broadcasting in Guyana and the possible role of the GNBA in monitoring social media, within the confines of the Cybercrime Act 2016.
“The Board Chairman alluded to the fact that the GNBA will be collaborating with the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) and the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) as it relates to monitoring broadcast content at the impending elections, slated for March 2020.

“It was also pointed out that the GNBA will be developing a Citizen Monitoring Programme that will further increase its monitoring capacity overall.”