Office of the Prime Minister Director of Communications, Sen. Hon. Latrae Rahming recently released a copy of a formal complaint he filed with the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA) against 102.7 FM Da Riddim and its show It Is What It Is hosted by Darren Cooper which aired on May 29th, 2026.
In the complaint Rahming states, “during the broadcast, the host and his guest (Sylvens Metayer) made and repeated a series of grave allegations of fact – presented to the listening public as established truth – asserting, among other things, that the Prime Minister of The Bahamas is personally implicated in, and is a business partner to, criminal narcotics activity, and in that a sitting Member of Cabinet is engaged in an improper personal relationship connected to such activity.”
URCA Corporate and Consumer Relations Manager, Juan McCartney spoke with ZNS News about the issue on Tuesday. He acknowledged that URCA was in receipt of the complaint.
He said, “what we’ll do is we will reach out to the licensee to understand what exactly was said. Right now we have a complaint and we are going to follow up with the station that the information was said to have been broadcast on about what was actually said and then we’ll do our investigation. If we find that there is some sort of merit we would usually do a request for more information. The next step could be a preliminary determination and then after we will make a final determination to determine whether that station was indeed in breach.”
McCartney also noted that while freedom of speech is constitutional right it does not shield individuals or broadcasters from potential legal consequences related to criminal libel or defamation. He said, “so not only are you in violation of URCA’s code if you are defaming people and saying things that you have no evidence of and cannot prove, you are also subject to court action. So if I were anyone with just access to the public airwaves, let alone a licensee, I would be very careful about establishing what you can actually prove when you say that on air. So clearly to involve people in criminal conspiracies without evidence is not only against URCA’s code of practice but is also in many instances a criminal violation and is also subject to civil litigation.”
The consumer relations manager said URCA encourages a robust environment where people can express themselves freely but emphasized that the national airwaves is regulated space. He said that URCA reserves the right to revoke licenses if certain breaches are made.
