Opinion
Analysis
Reporters’ sharpening-up
seminar
The media council of Tanzania (MCT), in collaboration with the BBC, has embarked
on training for journalists who are to cover the general elections due this
October.
The seminars involve over 300 journalists working for newspapers and radio
stations throughout the country, and are expected to be continued until October,
when Tanzanians will go to the polls to choose their leaders in the third multi-
party elections.
This training is extremely important, because it equips the journalists with
necessary skills which enable them to observe all the vital principles of
reporting. In this past week, the first day we reminded ourselves about a
journalist’s responsibility concerning election coverage. On day two we
discussed what issues the voters need to be addressed on; health, education,
wages etc. Day three we scrutinized various newspaper articles on electoral
concerns, giving positive and negative comments. The parties’ political
manifestos were examined on day four, and how these should be reported On the
fifth day we looked at the legal framework, defamation and its implications.
Interviewing techniques were dealt with by practical demonstration, with a live
interviewee.
Thanks to the UNDP for sponsoring this training, as it is now the right time,
since the election campaign will kick off effectively on August 21.
Reporters need be reminded of adherence to professional ethics, as experience
shows that when it is nearing the general elections, politicians can put a lot
of temptations in the way of reporters with intent to influence their coverage.
The media is considered to be the mirror of the society. Therefore fair and
impartial reporting as insisted by the instructors of the training should be the
main pillar for reporters who will be covering election issues.
Past experience has shown the elements of bias in some reports which have been
published or aired by some media institutions. This is a matter that should be
taken as a professional mistake, and nobody among the journalists who are
undergoing training should dare to fall into this trap.
Editors also must give close guidance to reporters, so as to avert any possible
professional misconduct.
The respective media institutions as well, should provide all necessary
facilities for reporters so that they do not succumb to problems that could be
avoided. The issue of transport, for instance is important. The reporters who
are going to the field must have a vehicle to transport them. Otherwise they
must have sufficient funds.
Another important element to bear in mind when reporting elections is that the
reporter should by no means take sides with any political party, by putting on
clothes which bear resemblance to the colours of that party.
Finally the training which the journalists are going through should give enough
guidance to reporters on any elements of defamation that might arise. It is
quite evident that the politicians often refute media reports or threaten to sue
for defamation.
For all reporters, irrespective of whether they are from Radio Television or
Newspapers, recording equipment is necessary so that whenever there is any
problem it is easy to justify the truth about what has been said or written .
Women for
votes
Presidential candidate Kikwete calls upon the electorate to discriminate in
favour of feminine candidates, when they propose themselves for a position.
IS such bias a good idea?, you may ask yourselves. Can we state that men and
women have equal abilities, therefore it should be a matter of indifference,
when choosing your person, what sex they are? No we can’t, equal rights does not
mean equal abilities.
This is why, when you enter a women’s college you’ll find the atmosphere totally
different from that of a men’s college.
But I think Kikwete is saying that it is because women have different abilities
that it’s necessary to have a good number of them in parliament.
In any single-sex institution, you’ll find the ambience is boring, and you’ll
long for a few at least of the other sex to be allowed in.
All men together means conversations focusing on football and car engines, with
some politics. All women together, you get tired of hearing about children,
ailments and the price of foodstuffs. We need women in parliament for those
questions to be asked that men would never think of asking.
Women ministers are needed to deal with matters which would otherwise get
neglected. When one hears a parliamentary debate, and a woman member asks a
question, there’s sometimes a kind of groan from the male majority.
Well, women feel just the same when they hear the need for more main roads being
brought up for the umpteenth time. It’s obvious that political balance requires
human beings to be represented in all their variety, and for both sexes to
govern. After all, Africa has been governed by men for a very long time. Need I
say more?
Analysis
Is this the man for senior
president of the EAC?
By Evarist Kagaruki
When President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda seized power in 1986 after five years
of guerrilla warfare, he banned party-politics and re-introduced political
activity without political parties, taking his own “Resistance Committees” as a
basis for political organisation under the “Movement” system.
He blamed multipartyism for dividing the Ugandan population along ethnic and
religious lines. He cogently argued that crucial questions facing Uganda at the
time were not about one-party state or multiparty politics; rather, he
maintained, they were about what economic and political system could best do and
most efficiently serve the needs and aspirations of the people of Uganda. He
believed neither one-party dictatorship nor multipartyism could provide answers
to Uganda’s seemingly intractable problems.
Museveni inherited a country that was still bleeding profusely from the old and
also the fresh wounds inflicted by eight years of brutal dictatorship with Idi
Amin, the Tanzanian-led war against the dictator, and five years of chaotic and
misguided rule by Lule, Binaisa and the Okellos who were routed by Museveni’s
guerrillas. And it was during a time when pluralism seemed to be causing a lot
of fractures and fractions in many parts of Africa.
So, keen observers of the Ugandan political scene correctly thought then that
President Museveni was right in his Movement system approach. Indeed he was,
because the system restored civility, serenity and relative peace to a country
severely destroyed by bloody violence, underwritten, as it were, by decades of
sectarian politics and the rule of the gun. Besides, under Museveni, Ugandans
have seen their economy grow robustly at a staggering 6 per cent for the last 15
years! His government has also managed to launch and maintain a successful
campaign to inhibit the spread of HIV/Aids in the country.
Overtime, Museveni became the darling of the donors, and Uganda was cited as the
economic model for the rest of Africa. Indeed, as one writer succinctly put it,
he had reached levels where nations, admiring of his accomplishments, would look
to him for solutions!
However, Museveni had two inherently serious problems which have become manifest
in the recent years: One, his rapacious ambition for power; and two, his
aversion to democracy. These shortcomings surely do not earn him a good name.
And the first one, especially, tends to erode all his grand achievements and
make him lose the respect the world accorded him as a visionary and statesman.
Museveni has changed the constitution, scrapping the presidential term limit
that would have barred him from standing in the next elections; it was a change
for his own sweet sake.
He can now run for re-election and, by the power of the incumbency, stay in
power ad infinitum. He is now the “Ngwazi” of Uganda! Of course what he has done
had already happened elsewhere in Africa; for example in Guinea, Chad and
Tunisia the constitution has been “raped” to legitimise limitless rule by the
serving presidents. This trend sets a bad precedent for the rest of the
continent.
President Museveni also last week won a referendum to establish multiparty
politics in Uganda. The needless exercise cost the poor country a whopping $12.5
million (Ush. 22 billion) which critics say was a waste of money badly needed
for poverty alleviation. Democrats wonder why the right to political association
should be subjected to a vote! Many think that the move was a ploy to appease
donors who fund nearly half of Uganda’s budget.
In recent years, the donor community has been pressuring the Kampala government
to undertake political reforms. But previously they seemed to tolerate
Museveni’s Movement system because of his enthusiastic embrace of the IMF/World
Bank Structural Adjustment Programme.
Superficially, the referendum sounds “democratic”, but in reality it was a
whitewash intended to paint Museveni as a “democrat” who had gone to the people
to seek their mandate to change the political system. The fact remains, however,
that the quintessential Museveni has always been arrogantly anti-multipartyism,
and has only succumbed to western pressure to concede political space.
It remains to be seen if he will be willing to let the opposition exercise their
democratic right without hindrance, in due course of time.