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This article participates on the following special index pages:
2008 harmonised elections - Index of articles
Media
analysis of the 2008 harmonized elections
Women In Politics
Support Unit (WIPSU)
March 31, 2008
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Pre-elections
analysis
Introduction
The last quarter of the year saw the highly debated 18th
amendment to the Zimbabwe Constitution.
The Amendment transformed the electoral and political landscape
introducing for the first time in Zimbabwe's history harmonized
elections. This meant that Presidential, Senatorial, House of Assembly
and Council elections were to be held in one day. In addition the
amendment shortened the term of office of President and made it
run concurrently with that of Parliament. The composition of the
Senate and House of Assembly changed with the former to consist
of 84 members and the latter to increase from 150 to 210 which meant
a restructuring and creation of constituencies.
Women's participation
in elections has largely been covered at the level of voting and
campaigning for men. Very few women have been able to break the
glass ceiling and make it into positions of decision-making. After
the 2005 parliamentary elections, there were only 48 women MPs (i.e.
22%) in the Zimbabwean Parliament, a far cry from the minimum of
50% as set by the SADC Declaration on Gender and Development. Whilst
the barriers to women's participation are many and varied,
the most fundamental one lie around the media's inability
to make women newsworthy.
The media is a chronicler
of events, an informer, an educator, a transformative space and
a tool to change society. It has the capacity to make a very positive
contribution towards social change. Without a means of communication,
women are not participating in governance; instead their male counterparts
who have the greatest outreach as they are covered and given voices
in the media are making the political decision. With this in mind,
it is vital for the media to play its role decisively in order to
inform, educate and empower the general public which is a civic
right as it feeds to the principle of freedom to access of information.
The
scope of analysis
The pre-elections media monitoring analysis comes about from a collection
of election issues covered in both the private and state print media
that is newspapers. The analysis focused on articles from daily
and weekly newspapers that is; The Herald, The Sunday Mail, the
Standard, Financial Gazette and Zimbabwe Independent as from 01
October 2007 to 31 March 2008.
The major objective
was to find out if the media was able to play its role, mandate
and obligation to disseminate information to the general public.
Great care was taken to rise above the newspapers biases for example
some newspapers are known to only publish pro or anti government.
However, the main thrust of the analysis was to find out if the
electorate was adequately being informed on electoral issues in
order for them to make informed decisions.
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