These past weeks have been quite stormy when it comes to the state’s bid to legislate laws. Having three bills in the legislative process at the moment, various groups among the public, whose interests are deemed at risk due to the legislation of the bills, are voicing their concerns, if not alarm as what they saw as punitive and restrictive measures.

Only on Friday, May 16, 2008, the Council of Ministers approved a bill that would revise the banking and insurance regulation law first issued in 1996. Although this was a proclamation that liberalized the finance sector and paved the road to the emergence of private banks and insurance firms - at least by local investors - government’s strong and expressed desire to rewrite it in a stringent manner has become a source of great anxiety to those in the industry.

Industry operators are literally scared, foreseeing a law that will furnish unchecked power to the regulators and subject them to painful penalties both in terms of imprisonment and expensive fines. Understandably, the finance industry is not happy with the government.

Another bill - the Charities and Societies Proclamation - wants to regulate the activities of an estimated 3,000 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), a.k.a non-state actors, who are believed to manage one billion dollars worth of aid. Granting government officials excessive authority in meddling in the internal affairs of these NGOs, the bill is described by those in the non-governmental arena as a death sentence, such as the chief of an orphanage, Minas Hiruy. Members of the civil society are displeased with what the government is out to accomplish in controlling them.

Authorities at the Federal Government appear to be little bothered by the outcry from this community, if a statement made last week by Assefa Kesito, minister of Justice, is to serve as an indication. He is in a hurry to send the bill to the Council of Ministers, before it is forwarded to Parliament.

But there is another controversial bill that has already made it to the parliamentary floor. The draft Press Law that has been authored to replace the 1992 Press Law has passed through the Council of Ministers, although nothing is clear as to whether or not the Council made any change in response to the industry’s jumbled plea for improvements to it.

A few weeks ago, the Minister of Information, Brehan Hailu, and one of the architects of the bill, Shemels Kemal, met with members of the media at the Hilton. A platform that was meant to offer an opportunity for dialogue with the government was used by the authorities to shove their views down the throat of those from the media. Members of the media are still gnashing their teeth over what they saw as an exercise done only for the sake of it.

It is not clear whether all these are connected, or happened to be a result of sheer coincidences. Nonetheless, this shows a state that has preferred to be at odds with people in three crucial areas in today’s Ethiopia. It could also be peculiar to observe a government with an appetite towards having three battlefronts all at the same time. It should be interesting to learn whether this displays the level of confidence the government has developed in itself, or whether this simply exposes the state of confusion and incoherence it suffers. It could possibly be both.

It appears that the government is in an unusual hurry to pass these bills into law before Parliament recess this year. Although the motive behind this rush is unclear, the Federal Government is determined in its desire to see the 1992 Press Law revised this year.

It is not alone in this for the media industry has been urging the government to revise the existing law for many years now. Both, understandably, have different points of departure.

However, to see the 1992 Press Law through the context of its controversial and unpopular nature overshadows the remarkable tenant in it: For the first time in the history of this country, prior censorship, a major obstacle to free expression, has been banned. This law also grants the media the right to collect, organize and disseminate information to members of the public, while it protects journalists from being forced to disclose the identity of their sources.

It is appropriate to recognize the many people from all sides of the political divide who have paid a dear price for these rights to be preserved into a law.

This does not mean that it was a perfect piece of legislature. In fact, the limitations of this law became apparent when members of the media fell into its trap; many were detained, prosecuted and subsequently subjected to imprisonment and fines all because the press law was applied in tandem with the penal code that was introduced during the monarchy and revised only recently. 

The penal code that had been in force until three years ago had many phrases, indeed many paragraphs that, while protecting the governments of the day - at first the imperial and then the military regime - gagged and bound journalists so much so that journalism as a career became a hazard, an undertaking to shy away from.

The media - print or broadcast - were subservient to the governments and no amount of discussion, if it was allowed in the first place, was to budge the governments’ collective minds. Repressive thinking by office holders was expected, thus encouraging more repressive laws: a journalist could have been incarcerated simply because he had annoyed a functionary at a department of the government through his writings.

It was such a code that was enforced, together with a relatively liberal press law applied on those charged.

Yet, the government was of the view that there was no sufficient legal instrument under its disposal to discipline what it saw as an increasingly irresponsible press. Journalists and the government were going along parallel lines without there ever being the possibility of a convergence of thoughts. Frankly speaking, that should not be a necessity either.

Thus, when the government tabled a Press Bill for consultation five years ago, the media industry was alarmed by the draft’s weight on the side of rigorous control instead of facilitating the emergence an independent, professional, vibrant and dynamic media in this country. If many journalists were disturbed at the sight of the first few drafts a couple of years ago, they had good reasons, for what was proposed amounted to a death penalty being passed on the fledging private press.

To its credit, the state demonstrated its will to consult the industry and incorporate some of the feedback it received from them. The government deserves acknowledgement for its effort in hiring an international expert from Article 19, a reputed advocate of freedom of speech, to study the best practices of four countries - United States, Canada, India and Germany - followed by a comparative analysis with its bill.

The result was a revised version of (perhaps for the fourth time since 2004) a Press Bill of 43 pages that contains six chapters and 49 articles.

This bill, which was also debated among some of the opposition parties in Parliament and the ruling party before it was sent to the Council of Ministers, is a far better version than its predecessors. It has eliminated many of the restrictions originally put in areas of ownership, registration, publishing, distribution, advertising, and penalty. Unlike its predecessor, it incorporates landmark provisions such as banning the imprisonment of a journalist accused of press offences, while it denies individual complainants from using the state prosecutor to press criminal charges against journalists.

It is, however, far from being an ideal law. Its attempt to define the role of privately owned media is wrong as its limitations of cross media ownership is exceptionally excessive and based on a concept that is phasing out in the world of satellite and fiber optics.

The bill harbors contradictions in that it tries to respect individual rights for freedom of expression, while restricting the individual from licensing a media product unless it is through an incorporated company. This clearly violates Article 29 of the constitution that granted the right to collect information, be informed, hold views and disseminate them with no fear of being subjected to retaliation.

But the most confusing and potentially alarming part is found in Chapter Three of the draft Press Law. It deals with what the bill terms “the right to information”, a piece of legislation known in the United States as the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA), a law that quite rightly prides itself on introducing, then fostering throughout the world.

The peril lies in the fact that the government insists that this Chapter be incorporated within the Press Law. The reason it gives has a lot to do with convenience and time and less to do with substance. The Press Law and the Freedom of Information Act are two separate entities and should be treated as such. The Press Law is a legal instrument used for regulating an industry, whereas the FoIA is exclusively a piece of legislation given to the public to compel a government to furnish information under its possession.

Britain, a stronghold of parliamentary argumentation, did not have rights to information laws of its own until recently. It has now been complied, under tremendous pressure from its own journalists, by including the law within its statutes. But there have been difficulties in interpretations even there: exactly what should the government accede to and what information should the government provide to the media on request.

A government mandated to undertake the public’s business is presumed to do that with complete openness and maximum disclosure. In fact, that is the rule. If there are exceptions, and indeed there should be, such government is exempted from being compelled to divulge information in very limited areas such as defense and matters of national security, or national trade secrets and results of expensive researches. The United States has nine such areas where its governments are not forced to reveal information for a limited period of time.

Ethiopia’s right to information law, ill advisedly poked in the Draft Press Law, is ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so, on the issue of exemptions. The Amharic equivalent put in the draft is ‘prohibition’, a term bandied with the word “denied”, where strict translation from the original into English can mean what the interpreter wishes it. It is sometimes the difference between incarceration and a large fine to an individual.

Clearing up this confusion determines which direction the draft law could go to. It is the ardent wish of this newspaper that Chapter Three will have been separated from the Press Law, to serve as a law unto itself, given to the general public than a specific industry.

Ethiopia can then be said to have moved significantly forward on its grueling trek towards the true freedom of its unrelenting and vibrant press. It can and ought to be able to police, by itself, and punish, if needs be, its own kind, when established law has not been broken. This is as done commonly in the rest of the world. The government can feel comfortable that no pack of wolves would be baying for its blood at every twist and turn. The media, too, can spare itself from being yet another group of discontented industry alongside the finance sector and the civil society.