Foundation to monitor indecent language
By: Emmanuel Akli
The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has come out with guidelines to monitor indecent language on the radio and TV stations by politicians and political activists. This is to ensure that campaigning for the December 7 elections is conducted in a decent way.
In 2008, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) also spearheaded the establishment of a code of conduct, which was signed by all the registered political parties in the country.
The code enjoined political parties to ensure absolute transparency in the electoral process and co-operate with electoral officers in the performance of their duties on Election Day. It also discouraged the political parties from allowing their followers to indulge in multiple voting, and all forms of electoral malpractices.
The code did not also allow leaders of the parties contesting the election to engage electoral officers in open confrontation. They were rather to observe the rules preventing unauthorised persons from having access to the polling station, and also recognise the rights of accredited observers and monitors to enter the polling stations.
Despite the pendency of these rules and regulations, some of the political parties allowed their followers to engage in multiple voting, gained access to cause troubles at the polling stations, and in some of the cases, engaged in open confrontations with the electoral officers.
The political parties also flouted the rules by promoting the mass registration of minors when the voters register was opened, to allow those who had attained 18 years in 2008 to register.
The major parties also engaged in all kinds of tricks on the election day, which nearly blew the country apart. For instance, whereas the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was accusing the National Democratic Congress (NDC) of intimidating its agents in the Volta Region, and preventing them from observing the election, the latter also accused the former of manipulating results in the Ashanti Region.
But, despite these obvious setbacks, the MFWA thinks allowing the political parties to have their own way could spell doom for the country. The media advocacy group has, therefore, come out with new guidelines, this time, to regulate political insults that have raised its ugly head in this election year.
The guidelines, developed by selected Professors from the Linguistic Department of the University of Ghana and the School of Languages, would be the measure to determine whether a local language or any other language used by a political activist on air against his opponent constitutes an insult or not.
The code, which will be shown to all the political parties at a special validation forum in Accra today, has a number of focal points. Among them are Tribal Flair, Bigotry, Hate Speech, Unsubstantiated allegations, and Insults among others.
The Deputy Executive Director of the MFWA, Mr. Sulemana Braimah, who spoke to The Chronicle yesterday, said 39 monitors had been selected to monitor campaign languages on 31 radio stations and eight TV stations across the country.
These monitors would undergo special training to enable them determine whether a statement made by a politician on air falls under any of the aforementioned focal points, and therefore, constitutes an insult or otherwise, that could lead to violence before, during and after the December 7 general elections.
According to him, findings of the monitors would be published every week for Ghanaians to know which of the political parties had resorted to insults as a means of campaigning, and the one using decent language in political discourses.
The idea is to stop the use of foul language, since no political party would be happy to be painted as violent or otherwise in the eyes of the electorate, who are going to determine the party that should rule the country.
Though the December elections are months away, the atmosphere is already charged, with some of the political parties resorting to the use of foul language on air. Some of the radio stations have also allowed this canker to fester, by allowing politicians to hurl insults at their opponents, without any restraint.