From: Leo Odera Omolo
  leooderaomolo@yahoo.com

  Kisumu
  10/08/07
 
THE MEDIA BILL IS A NEO - APARTHEID LAWS IN THE OFFING IN KENYA.

By Kipsiele Arap Sugurut.

An aspirant for the Belgut Parliamentary seat in Kericho district has called upon President Mwai Kibaki to reject the proposed media Bill in its totality.

Mr. Justice Kemei said the proposed media Bill would be an affront to the tenets of democracy. It would deny the press its freedom of expression and the rights to expose corruption and bad governance in the country.

Mr. Kemei said the new Bill is intended to gag the press and introduce draconian and totalitarian kind of rule in this country. It will curtail the freedom of expression and denied Kenyans their fundamental rights.

The government should allow the journalists to map out a system in which they could regulate their own rule and not deny the newsmen the right of performing their duty to the public. If enacted, it would compel journalists to reveal their sources of information.

Mr. Kemei, who is a former Information Officer in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and who also served as the Public Relations Manager with the National Cereal and Produce Board before joining Chemelil Sugar Company as its Corporate and Marketing Director appealed to Kenyan journalists to fight the Bill to the bitter end.

Speaking in Kericho, Mr. Kemei also severely criticized the government policy of prematurely forcing out those of its servants and parastatal Chiefs to relinquish their responsibility six months before the election proper, adding that this is another way of denying Kenyans quality leadership and representation at the parliamentary level.

Most of the University lecturers and other academicians wishing to contest the elections cannot sustain long period of layouts. They will need the campaign money, therefore this tactic will give room for semi - illiterate people the leeway of winning the election, but mostly those armed with ill - gotten money will have the advantage of clinching parliamentary seats.

Two months should be sufficient for any serving civil servant to quit his job and campaign for elections.

Mr. Kemei told the government to scrap the clause that would force the scribes to disclose their sources of information as it curtails the freedom of the press, which is well, entrenched in the current Republican Constitution.

Unless the government wanted to kill the press freedom, the media Bill should be declared unconstitutional and inoperable and a neo - apartheid kind of laws. He said even the dreaded, but now defunct apartheid regime in South Africa never used such draconian rule against the press, though it practiced racial segregation and discrimination against the black people for many years.

Ends.