Sub-Saharan Informer - Entertainment


		The Pan-African Newspaper

Entertainment

Ethiopia’s election board accuses oppositions of not using allotted airtime
By Simegnish Yekoye
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - Ethiopian National Board of Election (NBE) accused opposition parties of not using the media airtime allocated to them to campaign for the elections.
The oppositions on the other hand say they were not able to advantage of the free airtime because of the bureaucracy they are facing at the media organizations and due to the confusion created.
According to NBE, the media organizations are mandated by law to provide the airtime reserved for opposition parties to use for campaigning with music because the parties aren’t using it.
“It isn’t that we don’t want to use it,” said Dr. Merara Gudina, Chairperson of Mederek, a coalition of opposition parties. “But they always come up with different rules and regulations and we can’t meet them all every day. Their bureaucracy is killing us.”
According to Dr. Merara because they are required to submit their program 36 hours ahead of transmission and even if they do that they will be required for additional letter each time they bring their program.
“Now they are saying 24 hours ahead and tomorrow they will have another rule. They keep on confusing us,” Merara accused adding they have now started to use the Amharic service and will soon start to use other languages.

On the other hand, Gebru Asrat, another member of Medrek said that there are some parties who aren’t using the airtime for different reasons of their own and the statement that came out from the Election board should specify the parties one by one.

“We are using the airtime in Amharic already and the Oromifa and Tigrigna language will start transmission soon. But it said that the Board is accusing all oppositions as one.”

Mr. Gebru also added that his party is also using regional FM stations to reach out to people in the regions and the Board’s statement shouldn’t concern them.

The board used to require parties to submit their transmissions 36 hours earlier but due to complaints it has reduced the submission time to 24 hours.