BLP willing to pay for airtime

THE BARBADOS LABOUR PARTY (BLP) is willing to pay the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for airtime this weekend.

That disclosure came yesterday from general secretary Jerome Walcott, who gave a brief update on the matter during the launch of the party’s official campaign song. It will be used this weekend at the BLP’s annual conference in Queen’s Park, The City, to present the 30 candidates for the next General Election.

Last week, Walcott accused the state-run CBC of operating like an arm of the ruling Democratic Labour Party, and challenged management to give their leader, Mia Mottley, the same courtesy paid to Prime Minister Freundel Stuart by bringing his address live when the DLP held its conference this year.

Walcott said a letter was hand-delivered to the Pine, St Michael corporation yesterday morning, expressing the BLP’s willingness to pay to have Mottley’s address aired. She is scheduled to speak at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday.

‘No response’

“We have inquired and we have written to CBC requesting airtime. We already know the cost of the airtime, we’ve offered to pay for the airtime and this morning [yesterday] we sent it.

“In spite of the request I spoke to being made in September, to which we’re yet to receive a response, we have now written formally requesting certain time slots, and indicating our willingness to pay to dispatch a cheque to CBC as soon as they approve the airing of the time slot we requested.

“[This is] in terms of having the address of our political leader Mia Mottley carried, not live, because they certainly haven’t responded to our request to give us the same airtime and the same privilege that they granted to the leader of the Democratic Labour Party, Freundel Stuart, to speak at his conference.

“We’re now asking and saying that we’re requesting to have time and that we, recognising that they’re not preparing to cover it, that we’re prepared to pay for it . . . . We know that CBC is a national station, and we most certainly expect that they will accept our request to have airtime for the speech and address of our political leader Mia Mottley on Saturday,” Walcott stated.

The campaign song was a reworked version of Peter Ram’s winning 2015 Party Monarch track All Ah We. (YB)