Electoral System and Public Media—Classical Case of Democratic Deficit

By Alagi Yorro Jallow

The Gambia and Nigeria are two examples of countries where the public media were used and abused in recent elections and where the electoral commissions have flouted their own guidelines for fair coverage in the use of the state media. Sadly, too, the private media have faced many obstacles and challenges when it comes to performing its traditional role of informing the electorates.

Democracy in The Gambia

The Gambia has a long history of multiparty politics. Since early pre-independence political movements, active politics continued unabated into the era of self-government. Apart from the military intervention experienced from July 1994 to October 1996, The Gambia, unlike most other countries in West Africa, has had party-based selection of leadership deeply ingrained into its political philosophy. The snag throughout this period, however, was that the electoral process was fully government administered and was fraught with questionable activities.

The change of direction from a government administered electoral process to the establishment of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) was ironically an innovation of the revised constitution promulgated by the military in 1997. In addition to the IEC, a new constitution introduced a National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) to promote civic consciousness and civic participation in governance processes. It also established a National Ombudsman’s office to investigate complaints against holders of public office. Unfortunately, however, this last organization, in particular, exists in reality only on paper.

Other principal hallmarks of democracy are enshrined in the constitution of the Gambia, including such human rights guarantees as freedom of speech, conscience, assembly, association, and movement. Significantly, the constitution provides that every person, subject to the interests of national security, sovereignty and integrity, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, shall have the right to:

(a) Freedom of speech and expression, which include freedom of the press and other media,

(b)                        Freedom of thought, conscience and belief, which shall include academic freedom,

(c) Freedom to practice any religion and manifest such practice,

(d)Freedom to assemble and demonstrate peaceably and without arms,

(e) Freedom of association, which shall include freedom to form and join associations and unions.

Again, however, these rights exist primarily on paper only.

Since democracy is typically people-centric, freedoms are fundamental and must be guaranteed to ensure sincere and spirited participation in the electoral process. Dean Alger (1989) argues that the public must also have adequate general education and a perception of freedom to be able to select among competing options and to make electoral as well as other political choices necessary for the most effective use of democracy. To make electoral choices, Alger advocates that citizens have information on five areas of alternatives:

1. Qualification of the candidates, such as formal education and other training, including previous offices held and relevant experience.

2. Position taken by candidates on issues of concern as well as candidates’ general political orientation and philosophy.

3. Personal leadership qualities of candidates as well as personal characteristics that might support or present problems for candidates’ conduct of office.

4. Nature of office involved, including responsibilities.

5. Elements of and arguments concerning significant issues.

As implied, democracy requires access to reliable, timely, and verifiable information. Frank Webster writes that “the character of democracy is a sober and serious matter,” so if participatory democracy requires some level of knowledge of the issues for citizens to play a full part in the political process, then they must have made available to them the knowledge that allows for effective engagement” (Webster, 1999).

By implication, therefore, democracy is not feasible without the coordinate requirement of an informed society, or without a rational and politically conversant population, or without a functioning political public sphere that gives individuals the ability to decide political outcomes either autonomously or collectively. Many African nations manifest these shortcomings, which display active and well-populated elections but are dominated by largely illiterate or suppressed populations (Webster, 2004).

That is one of the reasons that despite well-established elections, The Gambia, with its high illiteracy rate, is still far from meeting the requirements of the theoretical ideals of democracy. The pursuit of the ideals mentioned above, according to former South African President Thabo Mbeki, led proponents of democracy in Africa to propagate “a series of democratic musts drawn from political science textbooks,” which, unfortunately, however, “may not have added one iota to the advancement and entrenchment of democracy on our continent” (Mbeki, 2003).

Electoral Decree and Public Media in The Gambia

Section 93 of the 1996 Elections Decree conferred on the Independent Electoral Commission powers to control the public media and also general powers to regulate the maximum amount of air time that may be used by candidates on privately owned radio stations to reduce “any advantage to a candidate with significantly more resources.” Election Media Rules were prescribed in 1996 for the conduct of the elections, and the director of broadcasting was made responsible for ensuring that all parties had equal air time in the public media and that coverage of party activities and broadcasts was fair.

Private radio stations were required to charge a uniform fee to all parties and were prohibited from discriminating against any party. A maximum air time of 15 minutes per candidate was prescribed for coverage by private radio. Nonetheless, these democratic media rules, which were prescribed to provide a more level playing field between the political parties contesting the parliamentary and presidential elections, were not followed. Only one of the minority political parties was afforded any significant air time during the campaign. Both public television and radio were generally denied to the main opposition parties, while extensive daily coverage of the ruling party was broadcast. Since a substantial amount of resources was required for a fair amount of private media coverage, the broadcast media were constrained to play a less significant role in the election process. The low literacy level coupled with limited circulation of newspapers in the country also contributed to reducing the impact of the election process (A. Bensouda, 1999).

Nigeria’s Election Media Coverage

Media coverage of the electoral process in Nigeria also has its challenges. Nigeria’s 2007 general election was the third such held since the transition from military to civilian rule in 1999 and was widely considered to be the crucial test of the commitment of Nigerian authorities to strengthening democracy. For the first time since independence, elections transferred power from one civilian president to another, a historic event that provided an opportunity to strengthen public confidence in the electoral and wider democratic process in that country and on the African continent.

In addition, there is a vibrant and expanding media environment in Nigeria. Yet although freedom of expression is guaranteed by the constitution, arbitrary actions by state security agencies curtail it at times. The press is also affected by the general financial instability of the industry, and with their low incomes journalists are too often tempted by offers of payment in return for favorable reporting. Moreover, citizen access to information is limited by insufficient power supplies, lack of means to purchase a newspaper, and a high rate of illiteracy.

Furthermore, the national state-owned media NTA (TV) and FRCN (radio), legally obliged to give fair and impartial coverage as they are publicly owned, nevertheless demonstrated bias in their news programs toward the incumbent party and its presidential candidate. The People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the ruling party, received more news time than all other political parties put together, and the PDP presidential candidate received by far the largest share of time (52 percent on radio and 30 percent on TV). Similarly, local state media tended to favor the local ruling party.

Distribution of the time among the candidates and parties in the news programs of three private broadcast media, monitored by the European Union Election Observation Mission (EOM), was more equitable in comparison with the state-owned media. However, coverage of the broadcast media, both state owned as well as private, was focused on only a small number of parties, predominantly the People’s Democratic Party, All Nigeria Peoples Party and Action Congress of Nigeria and  overall the broadcast media failed to provide balanced coverage of contestants, as required by law (EU Commission report).

The overall picture of the political scene provided by newspapers was more diverse than the one given by broadcast media. In contrast with the national broadcast media, which gave most of their election coverage to the presidential contest, national newspapers provided much more detailed coverage of municipal contests and developments in particular states. However, print media also provided the bulk of their coverage to a small number of parties with the highest ratings in the opinion polls.

In another action again fair media coverage, members of the state security service suspended broadcast of Lagos-based private TV Gotell and radio Unity FM on April 11, 2011, and sealed the premises of these stations. Their operations were not re-established during the remainder of the campaign. The state security services also raided offices of TV AIT on April 17, terminating the broadcast of a paid program critical of the incumbent president. The media regulatory framework was undermined by these actions of the state security service, which bypassed  National Broadcasting Corporation (EU Commission).

Conclusion

The euphoria that greeted the arrival of democracy in Africa at the beginning of the 1990s has given way to more pessimistic evaluations of the continent’s politics. Recently, close scrutiny of the quality of democracy itself, as opposed to a focus on electoral politics, has begun.  Such evaluations must take into account the role of the media in the democratization process, especially the constraints under which African journalists work.

As this paper has demonstrated, many of the impediments that the African media faced in the 1960s and 1970s are still alive today. Additionally, cases of arrest, harassment, threats, intimidation, and death exist throughout the continent. Even some countries that have almost always been democratic and never in the past had military rule or one-party systems are now beginning to force journalists to conform to the government line. This is a dangerous trend that needs to be halted if the limited democratic gains that have been made in recent decades are to be maintained.

Despite rhetoric to the contrary, this trend marks a reversal of the little that has been achieved politically since the beginning of the nineties. African leaders are still too deeply steeped in the politics of uniformity of views and are not in the habit of tolerating policy criticism. With generally weak political opposition in these countries, the media are an important tool identifying ill-conceived policies and for exposing corrupt practices that permeate much of what we call Africa’s democracies. Journalists will always be a mirror of society’s freedom, and fortunately, African journalists have predominately come to realize that role and to acknowledge as well their rights and obligations in the process of change. Their unyielding endeavors to protect freedom of speech, expression, and opinion may well be the rock on which Africa’s new democracy will be built in the next  millennium.