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The
Judiciary
Media
Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2005-2
Monday January 10th – Sunday January 16th
2005
THE official
opening of Zimbabwe’s legal year brought into greater perspective
some of the problems bedeviling the sector.
But the government
media downplayed some of these problems, particularly those perceived
to be politically sensitive, in the 17 stories these media carried.
The official
media merely regurgitated official pronouncements made during the
official opening as illustrated by The Herald and the Chronicle
(11/1) and The Sunday Mail (16/1), or restricted themselves
only to highlighting the poor working conditions in the sector.
As a result
they ignored concerns raised by independent observers that the judiciary
had been heavily compromised by the undue interference in its work
by the Executive arm of government (Studio 7, 10/1).
In fact, five
of the six stories the private media carried on the official opening
of the legal year were critical of the present set-up in the judiciary,
while the remainder supported newly-appointed Attorney General Sobusa
Gula-Ndebele’s concession that his office needed more resources
to effectively execute its duties.
In addition,
it was only the private media that accorded the MDC and independent
commentators the opportunity to respond to comments from the Chief
Justice, Godfrey Chidyausiku, made during his official opening of
the legal year. They were responding to Chidyausiku’s statement
that the MDC was to blame for the delay in finalizing its electoral
court petitions challenging some of the results of the 2000 parliamentary
election.
The commentators
were adamant that the judiciary was to blame for the delays.
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