Namibia: MISA urges NBC to accelerate Airtime Allocation Process

MISA is calling on the public broadcaster NBC to speed up the process of revising and implementing an alternative and equitable air time allocation for political parties participating in the 27-28 November 2009, Presidential and National Assembly elections.

As a public broadcaster, NBC has a responsibility to serve the public through its mandate to inform and educate by giving citizens access to all political parties and the information they would need to exercise their democratic right to vote a government of their choice. By removing the free airtime allocation, NBC is not only compromising its mandate, but denying citizens their right to receive critical information that would enable them to meaningfully participate in the democratic process.

The biggest losers in this scenario is not the political parties, but the citizens whose right to make informed decisions has been needlessly curtailed. Not only should NBC come up with a fair and equitable quota system for allocating political parties airtime, it must do so now and without further delay. The allocation of time should be guided by international and regional principles on the role of the media in creating a conducive environment for free and fair elections.

The SADC 2002 Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections as agreed by all SADC Heads of State including Namibia as well as other regional documents among them; the SADC Parliamentary Forum’s Norms and Standards for Elections in Southern Africa, the Electoral Commissions Forum (ECF) and the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa’s (EISA) Principles for Election Management, Monitoring and Observation in Southern Africa, call for fair and equal access to media to all political parties and candidates contesting in an election.

The SADC  2002 principles as well as the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa recommend that “all contesting parties and candidates should have equal access to the to the public media” among others.

NBC is also a signatory to the 2005 Southern Africa Broadcasting Association Guidelines and Principles for SADC broadcasters on covering elections, which states that ‘Broadcasters have the responsibility to treat all political parties equitably to ensure fair play.”furthermore that broadcasters shall ensure to “develop transparent formulae for calculating the allocation of airtime, including the amount of time and the time of broadcast to be provided to all individual political parties”.

The call for equal coverage and airtime is under the presumption that inherently all political parties should be treated as equal before elections and only the voters to decide. The NBC as a public service broadcaster, using public funds derived from tax payers has a duty to be impartial in informing and educating the electorate, in fact the NBC should help create an electoral environment through coverage designed to emphasise the  importance of elections and encourage participation by all citizens in the election process.  

MISA therefore urges and calls on the NBC to expediently announce and implement a fair and equitable time allocation for all political parties to accord citizens to exercise their right to make informed decision in the upcoming presidential and National Assembly elections. Ngamane Karuaihe-Upi MISA Namibia Broadcasting and ICT Research Officer 061 236069 (o) 061 236054 (f) 081 279 2332 (c) broadcast@misanamibia.org.na

-November 4, 2009 by Ngamane Karuaihe-Upi

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Source: www.misa.org (received via email alert 4.11.2009)