No to JB’s press rallies

Malawi President Joyce Banda’s rally-like press conferences show her lack of sophistication and respect for press freedom.

For her followers, Joyce Banda is a listening president—a shift from her predecessor Bingu wa Mutharika‘s executive arrogance. However, her handling of press freedom matters conjure up unsettling contrasts.

“In as far as press freedom is concerned, you have a friend in me,” she claimed on April 23 when the media wanted her to sign the Table Mountain Declaration on abolishing insult laws. However, the claim was fast watered down by contempt—for not only did she decline to sign the declaration but also confessed being allergic to newspapers and the State-run MBC she thinks want to kill her as they did unto Bingu.

Wrong, very wrong of the president whose former Minister of Information Moses Kunkuyu paid a one-off tribute to the power of the press in June 2012.

“The media saved the nation from a disaster. If it were not for the media, we don’t know what some of us would have been,” said the former minister of the media’s agenda-setting reporting during the transition of power following Bingu’s death.

Joyce Banda, the chief beneficiary of the media’s insistence on rule of law, transparency and accountability, should be commended for restoring government advertisements in critical newspapers and repealing Section 46 of the Penal Code prescribing the closure of any publication deemed undesirable by the Minister of Information.

No change in JB

However, the more things change, the more they remain the same. This is true about her press conferences where journalists are usually outnumbered by ruling party intruders.

Ignore the ‘Rose Garden’ sights of US President Barack Obama single handedly facing nosy journalists ready to bombard him with questions on explosive issues. Sanjika and Kamuzu palaces are no White House.

Here the president never walks alone. There was more of the same on Banda’s arrival from the US last Wednesday. By the gates of Sanjika, the scribes waited 20 minutes as truckloads of party supporters hurried in. During their wait, some wondered whether the eagerly awaited press conference had been cancelled in preference for a homecoming party. Equally irksome was another wait as the masses, garbed in orange, snaked into the bouquet room where the press was confined to front benches engulfed by strangers who cheered, clapped hands, murmured and winced as the “press rally” unfolded. They disrupted the flow of questions, laments the National Media Institute of Southern Africa (Namisa) president Anthony Kasunda in a statement.

Intimidating atmosphere

The media body describes the environment as unfriendly for journalists to ask pertinent questions. This was the day Malawians wanted to hear from President Banda what she makes of the worst uncovered looting at Capital Hill.

“It was clear to us that the presence of large numbers of cabinet ministers, party officials and supporters was to intimidate the media as it was apparent that the issue of Capital Hill looting of funds would dominate the news conference,” reads the statement, condemning the encounter as a lost opportunity.

Among the reporters who attended the Sanjika farce, Joy Radio’s George Mkandawire used the social media to apologise to his Facebook followers for not asking vital questions because the atmosphere was intimidating. Of course, there were about 30 reporters scrambling for one microphone at the event. Only four got the chance to ask questions.

The President and her PR ensemble must add some sophistication to the way they cast their press conferences. The party-dominated circuses scare away feeble-hearted journalists with crucial questions for Malawians and only the strong—even those with untimely and miscalculated questions—grab the microphone.

On its part, the Malawi Editors Forum applauds the journalists for asking pertinent questions without fear: Why not fire or arrest the top-placed gatekeepers who were seemingly sleeping on their hands as the looters filled their car boots with taxpayers’ and donor money? What is there to celebrate Malawi’s 50 years of nationhood as the poor get poorer due to wanton theft of public funds? How true are allegations that the dirty money is financing the ruling People’s Party affairs? Is it not time the President publicly announced the worth of her wealth?

Interrupting reporters

However, the editors’ body feels the party and government cadres who continue to flood what is meant to be the press show have several other platforms to interact with their leader. It deplores the claps and interjections by the President’s support cast as “an attempt to influence the nature of questions that the journalists can ask”, also censuring Banda for interrupting reporters, engaging in a duel with them and dominating the question-and-answer session with lengthy speeches.

No reporter might have been roughed up, but government spectacularly acknowledged the risks of bundling the press and party fanatics in one room in November 2010 when Times Group journalist Mike Chipalasa needed a police van and what law enforcers term “protective custody’ to leave Kamuzu International Airport alive. Chipalasa’s only crime was good journalism—asking Bingu to account for Catholic bishop’s criticism of ill-treatment vice-President Joyce Banda, the selection of his brother Peter Mutharika as an heir to the presidency, the biased coverage of the State-owned MBC and endless presidential trips when public officials were only allowed six international trips a year.

It really felt life-threatening, says Chipalasa.

Speaking in his personal capacity, he recalled: “I feared for my life, but I still had to ask the tough questions because Malawians wanted answers. The crowd was booing and spitting insults as I posed the questions. At the end, the party cadres mobbed me and threatened to beat me for embarrassing the president.”

Having escaped the jaws of an angry mob, Chipalasa recommends that the press conferences should be taking place in the VVIP section at the airport, as was the case during Bakili Muluzi’s reign (1994-2004). “The setting can be differed to the State House when the president is very tired, but the party loyalists should be locked out at all cost,” said the former journalist.

He reckons the citizenry need uncurbed access to information to make informed decision.

Arrests

The absence of assets declaration and access to information laws has begotten a simmering spat between government and the press. On September 12 2011, the police arrested Montfort Media journalist Ernest Mahwayo and charged him with conduct likely to cause breach of peace for taking pictures of President Bingu wa Mutharika’s plush mansion and marble mausoleum at his Ndata Farm in Thyolo. Recounting his jailhouse experience, Mahwayo said his investigative assignment was premised on the toils of villagers struggling with filthy water while livestock on the former president’s farm had nonstop supply of clean tap water.

“I ended up in detention because we don’t have Access to Information Law to help journalists investigate how presidents amass their wealth while the poor get poorer,” explained Mahwayo, who remembers Bingu as an enemy of the media.

In February this year, nearly a year after Bingu’s death and Banda’s rise, Reporters without Borders ranks Malawi 75th on the global Press Freedom Index.

The leap from position 146 in 2011 ought to bury the dreadful chapter. However, the intimidating press conferences threaten to erode the gains registered.

Looking back, media practitioners first raised the concerns in June 2012 when Namisa and Media Council of Malawi visited the president to thank her for abolishing the advertisements’ ban and Section 46. As part of the World Press Freedom Day commemorations in May this year, journalists delivered a four-point petition threatening to stop covering presidential functions if government continues filling press conferences with party cadres and dillydallying on the Access to Information Bill.

Kasunda says two more rally-like press conferences will trigger the boycott.

“We are following the situation closely because Malawians stand to be loser if we rush. But if what happened on Wednesday happens two more times, we will call for blackout of all presidential activities. Maybe, this may shake her to act on our concerns,” says Kasunda.

Media friendly environment

Like the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (Wan-Ifra) said in a letter to Bingu in March 2012, It is the duty of the state to provide an environment in which journalists are able to carry out their professional duties without fear of violence, and government has the duty to protect, not to intimidate, journalists.

While media and civil society want speedy passing of the Access to Information Bill, President Banda is under pressure to publicly declare her wealth as reportedly declared to the Speaker of Parliament. Rather than intimidating the press with party fanatics, the president must lift the veil of silence and secrecy.

Lately, government has been talking about an Assets Declaration Bill requiring all prominent public officers to outline their wealth when assuming and leaving their positions. Solicitor general Anthony Kamanga says the proposed law will be tabled at the next meeting of Parliament and those in need will only have to put into writing who they are, what information they want and why they need it.

This may be the first and necessary step in building a transparent and accountable society, however there is need to pass the access to information law to ensure journalists and other stakeholders do not have to go on their knees begging for information which they need in pursuit of Section of 37. Giving the press room to ask questions without let or hindrance is part of the desired deal.