Diverse independent media play reinforcing roles in Benin’s democratic success story
Analysis
By W. Joseph Campbell
freedomforum.org
03.05.01
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| Election official checks woman's registration papers at polling station in Cotonou in Benin, West Africa, yesterday. |
Voters in poor and tiny Benin yesterday renewed their unlikely, and so far successful, experiment in multiparty democracy — an experiment in which the West African country's nonofficial news media have taken important reinforcing roles.
Print and broadcast outlets offered detailed coverage up to the eve of voting in the first round of Benin's presidential elections. Indeed, the Beninese news media had anticipated the elections for months and their coverage of the jockeying among the 17 candidates effectively helped keep the democratic process on track.
Yesterday's voting, which took place with few disruptions, marked the third time in 10 years that the Beninese have cast ballots for president. Elections in 1991 and 1996 saw the incumbent president voted from office — outcomes exceedingly rare in sub-Saharan Africa.
Early returns from yesterday's balloting indicated that the incumbent, Mathieu Kérékou, and his predecessor, Nicéphore Soglo, will emerge as the two top vote-getters and thus qualify for a runoff March 18. A Kérékou-Soglo contest would represent a rematch of the elections in 1991 and 1996.
In the years since the last presidential election, Benin's news media have expanded significantly. More than a dozen independent newspapers now vie for readers in the country's largest city, Cotonou. Most titles appear in tabloid format, replete with bold headlines in black and red.
Two private television stations have taken to the air, as have about a dozen commercial radio stations. Call-in radio programs have become quite popular. And a few newspapers have established a presence online.
The vibrant media scene bears little resemblance to that of just a dozen years ago, when Benin was an obscure Marxist-Leninist backwater. The news media then included an underfunded, state-run daily newspaper and state-run television and radio. They were little more than mouthpieces for the regime, and by no means offered the critical reporting characteristic of the country's news media these days.
While their diversity is striking, the Beninese media are not without their flaws. A media watchdog commission set up in 1999 has censured several journalists for ethical lapses and nonprofessional conduct. Journalists' taking bribes from news sources has proven to be a defiant, perhaps intractable problem.
More generally, journalists still face the prospect of imprisonment under provisions of a harsh libel law enacted in 1998.
Even so, pre-election news coverage was searching and analytical.
The daily Le Matin, for example, described Kérékou as having benefited from his status as incumbent but added that his campaign lacked coordination and harmony.
Soglo's campaign, the newspaper said, suffered from his wife's continued prominence in domestic politics. Soglo's wife became known for her intemperate remarks and became a lightning rod for criticism during his presidential term from 1991 to 1996.
Both Kérékou and Soglo have less-than-stellar credentials as democrats.
Kérékou, a former military officer, seized power in 1972 and ruled as a self-described Marxist. He lost power in the elections in 1991 but returned in 1996, styling himself a born-again Christian and reformed democrat.
Soglo during his presidential term demonstrated pronounced authoritarian tendencies. He was eager to sidestep the elected National Assembly and clashed often with the country's emergent independent press. At one point during his presidency, Soglo claimed he was the victim of fierce media attacks without parallel anywhere in the world.
In this year's campaign, Soglo characterized Kérékou's return to power as an "economic catastrophe" and promised to bolster Benin's chronically impoverished economy. The country's gross national product is less than $400 per person and about a third of the country's 6.4 million people live below the poverty line.
Kérékou campaigned as the country's responsible elder statesman. His image stared down from billboards over a slogan that said his re-election was the country's sole guarantee of peace and stability, the Associated Press reported in the runup to yesterday's voting.
Even though Benin has been widely praised for its successful transition to democratic rule, some journalists say the experiment remains fragile.
For example, Aboubakar Takou, the editor of Le Béninoise newspaper, was quoted by the AP as saying, "Benin is in the first steps of democracy — we are still in school."
