Maravi

Rupiah abused public media for himself - Masebo

Rupiah abused public media for himself - Masebo
By Allan Mulenga
Wed 29 Feb. 2012, 10:00 CAT

SYLVIA Masebo says Rupiah Banda was the worst president in terms of abusing the state-owned media.

In an interview, Masebo (right), who is PF Chongwe member of parliament said the former president should not complain about the state media being a government mouthpiece because his leadership was poor in terms of media operations.

"The former president is the wrong person to talk about public media becoming a mouthpiece for the government because he himself, out of all the presidents Zambia has had, he's been the worst.

Even in the one party system, under Dr Kenneth Kaunda, even under Chiluba, under the late president Mwanawasa, he has been the worst president in terms of abuse of the public media," she said.

"He literally abused the public media for himself as an individual and for his party and for the government. So he cannot today be the one to talk about the public media which he destroyed."

Masebo said when Banda was president, he did not allow the public media to operate freely.

"He did not allow ZNBC to give a balanced coverage where even when someone is attacked, he did not even allow those people to go back to say do we have a comment. We saw articles in the Zambia Daily Mail being written without reference to the people they are talking about, even questions they were written headlined," she said.

Masebo said the government had managed to transform the state media.

"He cannot say anything about the public media because he was the worst. He gave bad leadership even as far as issues of media are concerned in this country. So he should just keep quiet, allow others to talk. In fact, the PF have done much better so far than he himself to try and make these public media institutions be independent," she said.

Masebo said Banda injured a lot of Zambians during his tenure.

"Today, we have seen cases against these public media which were instigated by himself. So how can he today turn around? Like I said earlier, if you sow seeds of destruction there is nothing you are going to reap. If you sow a seed of maize, you can only get maize cob. You cannot sow maize and expect to get groundnuts," said Masebo.

Labels: CORRUPTION, RUPIAH BANDA, SYLVIA MASEBO

posted by MrK @ 6:02 PM