[kictanet] Media council Draft bill 2010 (Day Five--tenure of office of Council members )

[toby at law-democracy.org]

Hi all,

I hope you will not mind if I make a few comments on yesterday's
discussion before moving on to the topic of today. Sorry to be late again,
but I'm sort of in transit (actually, I spent 12 hours in plane yesterday,
only to return to my starting point because we could not land at the
destination!).

The Bill does provide for the appointment of the Chair (section 8(6 or
really (7)), but I agree that it would be preferable for the group to
appoint its own Chair and this is a common practice.

A few comments on the debate about independence, on the one hand, and the
role of the judiciary, on the other. I am very sensitive to Lydia's point
about capture of these bodies by government and of course the Rwandan
Council is a disaster on this point. But to be honest, that was one area
where I felt this draft Bill was pretty good. Of course its independence
rests heavily on the independence of the judicial bodies and individuals
involved, but otherwise, it does have reasonably robust systems, including
the ability of anyone, or any group, to nominate and then the shortlisting
by the appointing Committee (although I would remove the representatives
from the Ministry of Justice and State Law Office from this Committee and
replace them with more independent people, probably not from the media,
since the other three members are already media representatives). So I see
the approach as a bit of a trade-off: perhaps excessive role for the
judiciary v. relatively strong guarantees of independence. I note that the
role of the JSC is simply to establish the appointing Committee. I'm not
sure which other body could be trusted with this.

So, my tweaks would be to change the composition of the appointing
Committee (which is the most important decision-maker in this process),
allow the body to elect its own chair and remove the requirement for the
chair to be eligible for appointment as a High Court judge.

On today's questions:

1) Grace is right to point out the duplication and to some extent
contradiction between sections 7 and 10. Probably they should be
integrated.

2) I have already commented on the Chair. I don't see a particular problem
with the Chair being reappointed, but there should at least be another
election.

Best, Toby


___________________________________
Toby Mendel

Centre for Law and Democracy
toby at law-democracy.org
Tel:  +1 902 431-3688
Fax: +1 902 431-3689
www.law-democracy.org