KENYA-MEDIA: Plenty of Shady Areas in Press Bill Saga

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Feb 11 1996 (IPS) - For journalists here, any hopes that Kenya’s government might change its mind on controversial press bills following the resignation of the chairman of a committee charged with drafting them would be illusive.

“I think the government will just go ahead with the draft laws,” John Ng’ang’a, a freelance photojournalist here told IPS. “Even if all the 20 or so members of the Task Force on Press Laws resigned, I don’t think it would bother the government”.

Hilary Ng’weno, editor-in-chief and publisher of the ‘Weekly Review’, resigned Thursday from the committee. For “personal reasons”, he said. He did not elaborate.

Commented Maina Kiai, a columnist for the independent ‘Sunday Nation’, “Ng’weno shouldn’t have been on the Task Force in the first place.” “He has a personal stake in the bills as a journalist,” Kiai told IPS.

Amos Wako, Kenya’s Attorney-General, Thursday told Task Force members at the Kenya School of Law that Ng’weno had informed him in March last that he wanted to step down as chairman, but was asked to remain until the group reconvened this month.

Wako thanked Ng’weno for his “dedicated service” and appointed Horace Awori, a former chairman of the Foreign Correspondents Association (FCA) here, as the new head of the task force, which comprises mainly journalists and lawyers.

The impression among media workers here is that there is more to Ng’weno’s resignation than is being said. “I think he felt he was sidelined on an important issue,” said a journalist, who asked not to be named.

Unconfirmed reports had it that Ng’weno had become disenchanted after it became clear that Wako was going to produce his own draft press bills.

When a local newspaper broke the news that the Attorney-General had, in fact, come up with a draft ‘Press Bill’ and ‘Press Council Bill’, all the Task Force members immediately disassociated themselves from them.

Human rights organisations, the FCA and the International Federation of Journalists accused Kenya’s government of trying to restrict press freedom, while criticism also came from some Western governments.

The bills provided for the establishment of a council headed by a presidential appointee from which journalists and media houses wishing to operate here would have to obtain licences.

Journalists would have to be of “good moral character”, to have been trained at a journalism school and not to have been convicted for fraud or any other type of dishonesty, among other requirements.

Licences would only be granted to media houses if they belonged to Kenyans or were 51-percent Kenyan owned. Journalists or media houses that fell foul of the proposed laws were to be suspended or barred for good from operating here.

Some say the state had decided to produce the own bills after waiting in vain for about a year for the Task Force to come up with its proposals. “That’s not true,” said a Task Force member. “We had been working and are still working on what we think is best for the press, media and journalists operating in this country”.

Following the outcry, President Daniel Arap Moi withdrew the drafts, saying his government had never intended to muzzle the press. On Thursday, however, Wako told members of the Task Force that they should regard the drafts as working documents to be considered alongside submissions from other sources.

He also announced that the European Union had submitted alternative proposals, but did not elaborate.

Foreign journalists working here are worried that the final result might not differ much from the drafts worked out by the state. If their fears come true, that would deal a “fatal blow” to press freedom in Kenya, says the FCA.

“We have said then, and we say again now, we oppose any schemes involving the licencing of journalists, foreign or Kenyan. Period,” FCA chairman Alex Belida said in a press statement.

He said his Association “remains opposed to the creation of any schemes or commissions legally empowered to oversee the conduct of their print or broadcast reports. Such measures have nothing to do with press freedom. They are instead measures of consorship.

He charged that the bills were “directly targetted against foreign news organisations, which thus far, while subject to intimidation, harassment and threats, have remained independent and unbroken”.

However, Kenyan journalists also feel the proposed bills were aimed at them. Ng’ang’a, for one, suspects that the government’s goal is to control journalists during the next elections, scheduled in 1997.

“The government is not happy with the way how journalists covered the last elections. I think they don’t want that to happen again,” he said.