OPPOSITION LEADERS CONTINUED TO CHALLENGE THE JUNE 1999 ELECTION results, which saw President Bakili Muluzi elected to a second five-year term. The opposition’s claims of election fraud were bolstered in March, when the British anticensorship group ARTICLE 19 released a report claiming that the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) had set up two disinformation teams…
By Claudia McElroyAll over Africa, conflict continued to be the single biggest threat to journalists and to press freedom itself. Both civil and cross-border wars were effectively used as an excuse by governments (and rebel forces) to harass, intimidate, and censor the press–often in the name of “national security”–and in some cases to kill journalists…
In April, President Bakili Muluzi declared that his party, the United Democratic Front (UDF), believed in “the tenets of constitutional democracy,” including press freedom. The political reality has failed to live up to this rhetoric. After the June 15 general elections gave Muluzi a second five-year term in office, the opposition contended that the elections…