By Derek Ingram
Many journalists would argue that there can be no limits to press freedom—or the independence of the journalist, as I prefer to term it. They would quote an old Fleet Street dictum: publish and be damned. But that notion was never sensible, nor was it realistic. There have to be some rules, some limits to what one can say—there must be some sense of responsibility. The laws of libel present a limit and they are necessary to protect the individual—including the politician.
Freedom of expression does not mean the freedom to say and print anything one likes. People must have the right to put forth views, but they must also have the right to be protected from the infliction of any personal hurt. And they must not be ridiculed. Comment must be fair; it must not be based on prejudice, whether in relation to a person’s race, skin colour or creed or his personal opinions.
On the other hand, there is a growing trend for legal constraints to be over-used and become a weapon with which to control the journalist. This is a developing trend. The legal system is increasingly used as a different way of gagging the press. In its 1996 report, Reporters San Frontières pointed out that now, instead of openly attacking journalists or their media organizations, governments were beginning to hide behind restrictive legislation and compliant judges. This had happened in Lesotho, Swaziland, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
In the Commonwealth, there is now an increasing determination to improve the quality of our democracy, to make good the lapses of the 1960s and 1970s,and to replace permanently one-party or military rule with multi-partyism. At the Harare summit in 1991, Commonwealth leaders realized that unless these improvements were made, the organization would lose its credibility. For too long the Commonwealth had been strong on rhetoric and short on action.
The principles laid down in the Singapore Declaration of 1971 and the Harare Declaration of 1991 were now to be more strictly applied and were supplemented by the Millbrook Action Programme — agreed upon by Commonwealth Heads of Government in New Zealand in 1995 — which took the Commonwealth some way towards becoming a rules-based association.
However, the adoption of the declarations does not mean acceptance of the Westminster system as the Commonwealth norm; other patterns may be more applicable in some countries. Experiments needed to be conducted, as in Uganda where a no- party system, a no-party government, and no- party elections were introduced in mid-1996. There the press has been remarkably free and varied, and incidents involving journalists have been few.
The report of the British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on the Future role of the Commonwealth1 said that the Committee had asked the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to explain the way that the British government interpreted the expression ‘free and democratic political processes’ which was used in the Singapore and Harare Declarations.
Its reply was:
… those by which every citizen has the right to take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives. The basis of the authority of government is the will of the people, expressed in periodic and genuine elections, by universal suffrage and held by secret ballot …How these universal principles are worked out in practice has to be looked at according to the circumstances of each country. The West-minster system is not the only model available. What can be done in an ethnically divided country with a history of conflict is unlikely to be the same as in a more unified society …
As a matter of principle, people must be free to choose their form of government and their rulers. The Oxford Dictionary defines democracy as ‘government by the whole people of a country’.
There is no way democracy can be introduced and maintained without freedom of expression, without acceptance of the independence of the journalist. It is the main pillar on which democracy has to be built. No election can be free, fair and properly organized without free media.
Most regrettably, none of the Commonwealth declarations contains any explicit reference to freedom of expression, even though all member states already subscribe to it as members of the UN. It is disturbing that Commonwealth Heads of Government are apparently still so nervous of criticism that, so far, they have been unwilling to spell out this freedom.
Some progress, however, was made when African Heads of Government held a Roundtable on Democracy and Good Governance in Africa in Botswana. A paper prepared by the Commonwealth Secretariat spelled out ‘four essential ingredients in all democracies regardless of national circumstances’. The second of these was ‘freedom of expression and association … within the constraints set in law, to express their political views including criticizing the performance of the government without fear of retribution’.
The statement from heads of government at the end of their meeting in Kasane moved freedom of expression from second to third place in the list. The articulation of freedom of expression also lost a sentence from the Secretariat report, which read: ‘Equitable access for all political groups and shades of opinion to the media is essential for democracy’. Nonetheless, the Kasane statement was the first from a Meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government—albeit a regional one—to make a firm commitment to freedom of expression. Therefore, it was all the more regrettable that during the next full Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting which took place in Edinburgh (24–27October 1997) the subject of freedom of expression was not touched.
The instrument to press home to governments the need for a wholehearted commitment to freedom of expression is in existence. The Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group on the Harare Declaration (CMAG) was set up under the 1995 Millbrook Action Programme to monitor progress on good governance and democracy. CMAG’s powers were strengthened at the Edinburgh meeting.
[This article from 2000 is currently free-to-access from the vaults of the Round Table Journal.]
The post The right to speak freely appeared first on Caribbean News Global.
